We recently took a trip with 70,000 of the globe's leading lights in the mobile world to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The event is enormous - spanning 8 halls, each the size of London's Olympia.

Below are the 5 highlights of the show for us, read on if you want a fuller synopsis.

• The next billion mobile phones.  There are now more than a billion mobiles on earth and the next billion are important as they will bring internet to a lot of people for the first time.  This was a software and hardware theme of the show.

• Firefox OS, this is a new operating system powered by HTML5, CSS and javascript and aims to be a contender to power some of the next billion smartphones. 

• No android, in the last few years I've got used to massive android themed stands, as Android is now the widely accepted de-facto OS for handset manufacturers there was less need for a huge presence at this show.

• The Internet of Things, this is a larger digital trend but has a place here as its driven by mobile technology.

• UKTI event, SMART UK.  We were lucky enough to catch the final of the Smart UK competition that was looking for the UK mobile companies with the potential to disrupt the mobile industry globally.  The finalists were Made in Mind , Open Signal, Paddle, Real VNC and Skin Analytics.  It’s not only the brilliant people that are driving these innovative businesses, but the shifts in thinking and uses of tech that are worth noting.

The next billion mobiles will probably ship with mobile internet and bring many of their users internet for the first time.  There was a lot of discussion of how this can be used to bring healthcare and other aid and benefits to this group.  An interesting company pioneering distance diagnosis (diagnosing a patient from elsewhere on the globe) was finalist for UKTI's Smart mobile companies competition Skin Analytics which aims to diagnose skin cancer on the fly, proving how medical provision could be delivered in this area. 

Firefox OS is based on Open Source code, this offering from Mozilla (a not for profit business) aims to open up mobile development to the wider developer community.  There are an estimated 7 million HTML coders in the world, against approx 400,000 iOS developers.  Allowing more generalist developers in emerging markets to code applications for these devices will allow for more relevant applications to be built.  This is a fundamental shift to open up the ability to develop applications.  Just 10 years ago the barriers to develop meaningful software lay behind years of computer programming study.  This kind of initiative is a very important step for the democratisation of mobile.  Firefox OS had secured the backing of 17 operators globally by the time we had left MWC.

The Internet of Things allows components to communicate as part of a larger system.  Examples included a way to communicate with on-board car computers to build up a real time view of traffic patterns and road hazards, reporting back on localised black ice etc.  VNC had a great solution that it is pioneering in this area VNCAutomotive that was showcased in the Smart UK event.  With more everyday devices being connected, how we integrate these services is now a great challenge.  Sony's devices communicate with each other by touch whilst there was an android based home phone from Korea that e-mails you pictures of objects it detects movement from at your home (e.g. cat, burglar).