Mobile World Congress sprawls across the Fira de Barcelona campus in one of the most fascinating cities in Europe. Eight halls of exhibits house the entire global mobile ecosystem for one week starting Feb. 15. Chips? Check. Mobile operator infrastructure equipment? Check. The operators themselves? Yup. Devices? You've got to fend them off like a bull fighter. Content. Apps. Development tools. App stores. Scantily clad dancers. Spanish ones. Flight? Check. Now where to begin...

First, Light Reading's European editor, Ray Le Maistre, caught up with the CMO of conference organizer GSMA for some of the trends we can expect at Mobile World Congress. You can watch the video below.

InformationWeek blogger Eric Zeman and I will be hustling from press conference to private meeting, catching video and images, and piecing together the stories that matter in nearly every mobile category. For now, most every category does matter and will until smartphones and small form-factor tablets become a primary enterprise end-user device; but a few categories matter most, especially when it comes to enterprise deployment.

The Platforms and Apps

One of the most interesting battles continues to rage between the mobile platform players, and although it's fun to watch, the number of choices makes IT's job even more difficult. For the enterprise, it used to be easy: RIM/BlackBerry. Now Apple's iPhone is a major enterprise force, and Google's Android OS, which runs on several devices on several carrier networks, is the newest fair-haired platform. Palm and Windows Mobile keep things interesting while Symbian continues to dominate globally.

Of those, only Windows Mobile has been able to clutch on for dear life as an enterprise contender. Microsoft is holding a press conference on Monday (Feb. 15) afternoon and the rumors have the company producing everything from Windows Mobile 7 to a Zune phone. I'll be talking with Microsoft after the press conference and getting a demo (and video of the demo) right after. Apparently, Steve Ballmer will come out to Spain to make the announcement in person.

(For a deeper dive into feature-rich apps on the go, check out the InformationWeek Analytics report Air Pressure: Why IT Must Sort Out App Mobilization Challenges .)

Beyond the surface decisions about what end users like, IT needs to manage these devices, which is why the BlackBerry, with the pricey BlackBerry Enterprise Server has always shined. Google's recent announcement about mobile device management (an excellent analysis of that can be found here) shakes things up a bit, but don't expect BlackBerry shops to part with their beloved e-mail readers easily. Change is hard, even if it's free. But RIM needs to be careful, because innovations from elsewhere could signal its festinate demise. I'll be talking with a RIM executive as well, and I'll provide an update.

Google has said it isn't making any announcements in Barcelona. Last year, Android units were surprisingly non-existent; this year, all the buzz (NO not that Buzz!) is about how many new Android devices we'll see, and if that's true, Google won't need to say a word. Nevertheless, for the first time Google CEO Eric Schmidt is making the trek to keynote at the event. Perhaps he'll paint an inspiring vision of where the Android platform is heading.

The mobile platform choice is also made increasingly tough by the development environments for the devices. Enterprise IT shops have started extending apps out to these platforms, so if they've made a bet on the iPhone or RIM or Android, they're also choosing how they'll extend those apps. And what about the enterprise that wants to serve not just its employees, but also its customers? I'll be talking to several companies about the development arena, from Sybase and IdeaWorks, which make tools that sit above the phone's native development platform, to app makers like Shazaam, and to Visa, which wants to take a big chunk of the mobile payments business. Talking to mobile developers, I'm skeptical about whether these platforms can provide full access to the features of each platform for which it compiles.

Also, we're seeing many more enterprise applications, beyond e-mail and lousy Web browsing and into lightweight front ends to everything from CRM and ERP applications to business intelligence and even collaboration. Now mobile applications come from the likes of SAP and Workday. At MacWorld, IBM announced some of its enterprise-class social and collaboration applications for the iPhone, including Lotus Connections and Sametime.

Side note 1: Adobe's CEO, Shantanu Narayen, will also speak; some may be expecting announcements regarding Flash, but last year Adobe focused a bit more on AIR. I'm guessing we'll hear more on both fronts.

Side note 2: Apple, which doesn't seem to need ANY major event presence these days, including MacWorld, has never been to Mobile World Congress and won't be there this year.

Side note 3: Mobile World Congress has always had a content hall, and each year it seems to beef it up, in addition to making the application story a stronger part of its mission. This year, the conference has an entire day and series of sessions for application developers, called App Planet. Motorola, Google, and others are creating developer labs or similar events within, or even outside of, App Planet.