Now the stands are all empty / Let the roadies take the hall / Pack it up and tear it down / They’re the first to come and last to leave / Working for that minimum wage / They’ll set it up for another fair. (With apologies to Jackson Browne, The Load Out)

There is always something sad about Thursday afternoon at the Mobile World Congress. Many of the Europeans have already left so they can sleep in their own beds and a lot of non-Europeans flew home in the morning. The big parties are on Wednesday night and so there is much water and aspirin consumption on Thursday morning. The crowds thin out. Meetings are more subject to last minute cancelations. Everyone complains of sore feet and even the CBOSS dancing girls seem dispirited, overtired or both.

Like Jackson Browne’s song the mood is wistful and becomes reflective: What did we learn? Where is the industry going? Where did I leave my best scarf?

Phil Marshall has already given his take so I’ll pick up some different themes.

Although the stands were still big and shiny, Nokia still had its party and top restaurants couldn’t be had without a reservation, the recession is biting and could bite very deep. We asked vendors what they were hearing about CAPEX budgets and the range was wide but universally scary. Nokia Siemens says revenues will be down 10% in 2009 but since about 40% of their revenues come from relatively stable services, equipment will drop a lot more. There were a cluster of forecasts around 15% lower CAPEX than 2008 (consistent with NSN) but another cluster around 30 to 50% lower budgets. Yankee Group lowered our subscriber growth forecasts by an average of 50% and so growth-oriented CAPEX might also drop in that range.

But not all CAPEX categories will be affected equally. Short-term payoff investments like capacity or coverage might still make it past the sharp-pencil brigade. But despite the optimism of application platform vendors, I think boards will be very skeptical of the promise of future revenues and be focused on the reality of current cost cutting and hoarding cash.

More scary news comes from dramatic reports of data traffic growth from mobile broadband. Normally, increasing data traffic is thought to be a good thing, but traffic is growing very much faster than revenues. Flat-rate plans and – for some operators – the misguided pursuit of fixed broadband subscribers are pressuring profits and cash. The industry doesn’t need new mobile broadband customers to get turned off by lousy service quality, shareholders can’t fund capacity expansion indefinitely and peer-to-peer users would probably fill in the new capacity anyway. Regulators stand by to close off solutions like choking back on throughput or capping downloads. This paragraph does not end with “Fortunately the solution is …” because frankly, the industry is only just starting to recognize and define the problem.

Still there was some positive news especially for emerging markets. Vendors are putting the unique characteristics of these high-growth but low-ARPU markets front and center with targeted solutions like low-power base stations which – oh, by the way – also happen to be appealing to cost-cutting developed-market operators.

I heard the usual “There’s nothing new!” complaints about devices but haven’t we done all the variations of slide/flip/rounded-corners-on-candy-bars that we can? I saw innovative software and chipsets that will bring the mobile internet experience a lot closer to the fixed internet experience. And I saw attempts to solve the “Poor Man’s PC” problem that show great promise.

Although there were visibly (and at times thankfully) fewer attendees (officially 47,000), vendors reported much more productive meetings meaning that the decision-makers came and the mere gawkers stayed home.

More good news: A nasty rumor that the MWC was moving back to Cannes (NO!!!) from beautiful and accessible Barcelona proved to be false, at least for 2010.

AND I found my good scarf at the bottom of my brief case under a bunch of glossy handouts from the mobile multimedia companies in Hall 7.