Samsung Galaxy S6 and Edge version, HTC One M9, Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet expected to debut at MWC
10 things to expect at Mobile World Congress — Every year, tens of thousands of reporters, analysts, and suited-up businesspeople descend upon Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress trade show.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is The Verge's annual Barcelona lookahead, and it captures Mobile World Congress at its peak as the fixed February anchor for the Android flagship calendar — Samsung, HTC, and Sony all staging their year-defining hardware on one floor. The pattern holds across the decade of coverage that followed: Samsung returned the next year with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge at MWC 2016, and the show kept anchoring LG, Huawei, and Xiaomi launches through the late 2010s.
What makes this edition notable in hindsight is the cast list itself. HTC's One M9 marks its last marquee moment on this stage before it fades from these previews entirely, while Sony's Xperia Z4 Tablet shows the company hedging between phones and productivity devices.
First-order effects
- Samsung puts the curved-screen experiment front and center by launching the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge together, making the Edge variant a first-class flagship rather than a side project — a bet it doubled down on with the S7 Edge a year later.
- HTC and Sony get their annual window against Samsung's launch cycle, with HTC betting its flagship fortunes on the One M9 and Sony pushing the Xperia Z4 Tablet as its MWC headline device.
Second-order effects
- Rivals time their own reveals to the same stage: LG's G5 and Xiaomi's Mi 5 arrive at the following year's show, confirming that skipping MWC means ceding the February news cycle to whoever launches there.
- Samsung's dual-Edge strategy forces competitors to answer with screen differentiation rather than spec-sheet parity, since the S7 Edge follow-up showed curved displays becoming a durable tier in the lineup rather than a one-off.
Third-order effects
- Across the decade this coverage spans, MWC's launch roster migrates from Western incumbents toward Chinese makers — Huawei and Xiaomi headlining by the late 2010s alongside foldables and 5G hype — leaving HTC absent and Samsung as the one constant anchor.
- If the pattern holds, the trade show functions less as a gadget bazaar than as the industry's synchronized release clock, with each February's preview functioning as a running scorecard of which OEMs still matter.
The trend: Mobile World Congress has hardened into the annual February anchor of the global smartphone launch calendar, with Samsung's Galaxy S line as its most consistent fixture and the exhibitor roster steadily shifting toward Chinese manufacturers.