Nokia

Nokia is still fresh from its own Nokia World conference in September, where it launched the E7 and C7 handsets, but we should see some more from the Finnish firm at MWC, despite announcing nothing last year bar MeeGo.

However, we're already hearing rumblings of the new E6-00 as well as already spotting some MeeGo-powered smartphones at the tail end of last year... expect to see more from that story in the near future.

The near future being 2 February, when a leaked MeeGo bug report revealed some potential Nokia superphone specs.

MeeGo could also be making its way to a tablet device - mysterious spy shots leaked in January which could end up being a MeeGo tablet unveiled at the show.

Sony Ericsson

Is the joint venture finished after the Xperia Arc? Far from it - we predict big things from Sony Ericsson at Mobile World Congress.

The first is the PSP Phone or the Xperia Play - it's been so often leaked it's practically boring now, so Sony Ericsson needs to announce it already.

We pre-empted the announcement with a sneaky hands on Xperia Play review in late January, although we're looking forward to finding out what games will be available. Soon after, the company made the handset official with a Superbowl advert, while UK networks named April as the UK release date.

A Vivaz reboot, under the codename of Hallon, has been tipped to TechRadar as appearing in the near future. And so it will, as we broke the news of its official name, Sony Ericsson Neo, on 30 January.

The X10 Mini Pro looks set for a refresh if Chinese pictures are to be believed.

HTC

Ah, HTC. Often the headline grabbers of MWC, this year it needs to go some way to manage that feat again.

The HTC Scribe, the company's first proper tablet (or could it be the HTC Flyer?), looks very likely. Adding fuel to the speculation fire, apparent specs for the HTC Flyer tablet were leaked on 26 January; looks like it will ship with Android 2.3.

Could we also see a tablet version of the popular Sense Android UI unveiled as HTC Sensation?

We're sure some high-end phones will be announced as per usual; we hope for a Desire and Desire HD refresh, as well as something to reboot the beautiful-but-overlooked HTC Legend - but surprisingly for the Taiwanese firm, leaks have been scarce this close to launch.

Scarce until 26 January, that is, when news of an official partnership with Facebook leaked, along with rumours that HTC will be revealing two Facebook-branded smartphones at the show. And then, on 27 January, Facebook denied the rumours, saying HTC was simply using Facebook's APIs in "an interesting way." We shall see.

An HTC Desire 2 was also spotted and snapped on the Taiwanese metro system, thanks to a keen eyed commuter, later it showed up in a German Vodafone inventory, thus somewhat confirming its existence.

And now we're hearing word of something different - the HTC Desire 2 will actually be called the HTC Desire S and it will be joined by the HTC Wildfire S... could the S suffix be set for another showing from a new mobile brand? We also saw a sneak peek of the HTC Wildfire S pop up in an official HTC advert.

Google

Google needs to show of a little bit more of Honeycomb (Android 3.0) in the near future, as we didn't get nearly enough from the search giant at CES.

Whether Eric Schmidt's on-stage talk will reveal anything or a handful of tablets dotted around will do the job, the fact Google is releasing the Honeycomb SDK later this month means we should see a lot more in the near future.

RIM

RIM is traditionally quite quiet at MWC, although it will still have a presence this year.

This means that we should get some more time with the BlackBerry PlayBook, and hopefully some clue about the mysterious battery life - is it going to be as poor as some people are suggesting?

Since what looks like RIM's entire BlackBerry line-up for the year was recently leaked (the BlackBerry Curve Apollo, BlackBerry Dakota, BlackBerry Storm 3 and BlackBerry Torch 2 all made an appearance), RIM could also take the opportunity to make some or all of these handsets official.

Palm/HP

Palm is dead, long live Palm! That's what HP is hoping for the brand, and the much-rumoured WebOS -powered PalmPad (Hurricane) HAS to step into the light soon, as the parent company will be desperate to see a return on its substantial investment.

On 9 February, HP officially retired the Palm brand name. So long, Palm.

On the plus side, it did unveil a couple of new WebOS-toting phones, including the HP Pre 3 (try saying that with a mouthful of marshmallows), the tiny little HP Veer.

The first pictures of the PalmPad emerged in late January, but HP is promising that more will be revealed on 9 February.And so it was, with the dawn of the long-awaitedHP TouchPad.

Qualcomm

Having quietly shown off its dual-core Snapdragon processors at CES, Qualcomm should be shedding a little more light on its super-charged 1.2GHz CPUs in Barcelona.

Nvidia

After a presentation slide leaked on 24 January, we're fully expecting Nvidia to whip the curtain off its Tegra 2 3D processors at the show, both an AP25 version for smartphones and a T25 version for tablets.

INQ

Pre-empting the Mobile World Congress rush, INQ has revealed its big news a few days earlier. And big news it is, with a Facebook-phone revealed as the INQ Cloud Touch. We swiftly got down and dirty with a hands on INQ Cloud Touch review. A QWERTY-toting sibling was also revealed as the INQ Cloud Q.