As Mobile World Congress draws to a close, listen very carefully (through the smoke of the Crypto Wars) and you might hear Tim Cook and Apple breathing a sigh of relief. With expectations high that the iPhone 5SE will be announced in early March and the iPhone 7 on course for Apple's regular September update window, there was an opportunity for the competition to come up with a smartphone that would challenge Apple's dominance.
Looking over not just the hardware released but the media coverage that is coming out of Barcelona, the early signs show nothing that should trouble Cupertino. Once more it sat out of MWC, gambling that it could ignore the competition, safe in the prediction that nobody would come out with anything major, and any small gains would be drowned out in the media firestorm of coverage.
Apple has won that gamble, and the path forward is clear for its own hardware to make a sizeable impact in 2016.
Putting aside HP's new Windows 10 handset as being a 'curious punt' at best, the vast majority of announced devices at MWC run Android and are taking part in a huge game of specifications Top Trumps. The SnapDragon 820 processor offers a faster and more powerful experience, the flagship devices all pick up a boost in RAM to work with the 820, and on-board storage increases to a baseline of 32GB with higher options available. Everything is automatically 'a bit better than last year's model'.
Apple's chief smartphone rival is Samsung. The South Korean company has boosted its camera technology and in all likelihood has extended its technical lead over Apple (we'll confirm that when we can do a camera-shoot out here on Forbes), but otherwise the 'new' features on the Galaxy S7 family are waterproofing and microSD card support - features found in the Galaxy S5 that the Galaxy S6 family ignored. In essence Samsung is having a 'do-over' with its hardware, taking the chance to get a stable SnapDrgaon into its hardware, but beyond the slightly bigger numbers what does the S7 offer that makes it a must-buy over previous Galaxy devices?
That's not to say there are no improvements, but everyone seems to have taken the iterative approach, picked up the new parts on offer, and bolted them under a sheet of glass. I guess when Apple dominates the smartphone profits and squeezes the money available for the Android companies to invest in research and development, the 2016 handsets are going to come up short.
Next: LG steps up to the plate...
Perhaps the only challenger with something genuinely exciting is LG's modular approach with the G5. Being able to switch out hardware modules for extra functionality is a neat trick which was demonstrated with an additional battery and an improved audio amplifier. It's a great headline feature for capturing the attention of the press, but much of the retail success will depend on the price and availability of the modules.
It's a new approach to a modern smartphone, but a look back through history of portable electronics will show multiple devices have pushed the idea of hardware expansion port. The Compaq iPaq, the Handspring Visor, and the Psion MC400 spring to mind, but the modules rarely have a huge impact with the consumer.
LG has a chance to customize hardware in an easy and transparent way if it can tap into a wide range of modules I would expect that most people will decide on the extra module at the point of purchase and never alter the device. That's great for LG, it reduces the complexity of offering specialist smartphones (presumably new modules would not need to go through FCC or carrier testing to create a new feature for the base LG G5 model), but I don't see it as being a game changer.
Thanks to the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus release focussing on smaller changes, Apple is familiar with the iterative update and the impact it can have on sales. Last quarter's slowdown in iPhone sales, driven by a lack of any tent pole additions to the iPhone 6S hardware (3D Touch doesn't yet count until it's platform wide, in my opinion) handed the iPhone rivals a chance to catch up and potentially overtake Apple in terms of perception and perhaps in sales.
That's not happened. Apple maintains its popular lead, the rivals have shown their cards and there's no sign of pocket aces, and Tim Cook can get the team ready to solidify the lead with the iPhone 5SE release in March and extend the brand in September with the iPhone 7.
(Now read about the other winner from Mobile World Congress who forgot to bring a flagship smartphone).
