MWC 2024 Highlights & Insights
Leonard Lee
Tech Industry Advisor & Realist dedicated to making you constructively uncomfortable. Ring the bell ?? and subscribe to next-curve.com for the tech and industry insights the matter!
Date:?February 24 to March 1, 2024 Location:?Barcelona, Spain
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
NOTICE
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EVENT SUMMARY:
With approximately 101,000 attendees accounted for at this year’s Mobile World Congress, this year’s event was a statistical success for GSMA but was it a success for the mobile wireless industry and telecommunications at large? This is the question we contemplated after an entire week in and around the telecommunications event of the year.
We have 15 takeaways from this year’s MWC that collectively attempt to answer this complex question from the neXt Curve point of view.
neXt Curve was on the ground in Barcelona the four official conference days as well as for two days of pre-event engagements with Motorola Mobility, Lenovo, Samsung Networks, Ciena, and Marvell. We had a heavily packed schedule throughout the week with little time to wander the eight halls of the Fira to bump into something off agenda.?
This is something we hope to fix next year.
This year, we tackled Mobile World Congress Barcelona in partnership with Transforma Insights with a broad research agenda that included:
Listen to our presentation of our joint research agenda with Transforma Insights ’s Matt Hatton and Jim Morrish in this neXt Curve reThink Podcast episode?(link).
Find out more about neXt Curve’s partnership with Transforma Insights in our?press release?(link).
We also collaborated with Earl Lum of EJL Wireless Research in our joint coverage of RAN infrastructure and technology. This year, Earl and I managed to engage with all of the major RAN vendors including Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung Networks, ZTE, and Huawei as well as Open RAN players as Mavenir.?
Earl also spent a great deal of his time talking to the big Japanese radio players such as 富士通 and 日本电气股份有限公司 which rounded out our view on the vendor landscape and what the industry can expect in RAN and network infrastructure this year.
Earl’s MWC 2024 summary is available on LinkedIn (link).
Let’s not forget IoT Stars which took place on Monday evening at the Damm Estrella in the center of the city. Over 120 IoT industry leaders and innovators showed up to socialize and to listen to me close out the event with five observations of “successful” IoT companies.?
These observations ended up resonating throughout the course of the week as we engaged many vendors and operators on the topics of private connectivity, NTN, and IoT at large.
Find out more about IoT Stars here (link).
Many thanks to more than fifty vendors and operators we talked to at MWC 2024 listed in the Companies Engaged section below.
Now, for our 15 takeaways from Mobile World Congress 2024.
If you would like access to our unpublished research as well as advisory services, contact Leonard Lee at [email protected].
neXt Curve KEY ANALYSIS:
TAKEAWAY 1: An industry in need of focus on the present distracted by the future??
The tagline for Mobile World Congress 2024 was “future first” at a time when the industry?truly?needs to focus on the present. ?
Like last year, the keynotes and summits at the cardinal telecom industry event continue to prime the hype pump substituting last year’s sensation and hopeful?techno savior with the latest installment. Last year it was private networks. The year before, it was The Metaverse. This year it was unsurprisingly generative AI.
“Earth Computing” continues to be farfetched and aspirational doing little to guide the industry out of its persisting funk. Certainly, reminding the industry for a decade that revenue growth has stagnated while data traffic has doubled or tripled has not helped.
Last year, we cited the need for a focus on modernization and elevating the readiness of operators at MWC 2023. In a collaboration with Amdocs, we proposed the idea of?full-stack modernization?which is that thesis that extensible core operational and network infrastructure management capabilities were prerequisite to fostering service innovation (hence monetization opportunities) as an operator evolved their networks along the 5G maturity curve.
We felt that this should have been the focus of vendors at the event. Unfortunately, the topic of modernization was passed over by generative AI hype.
TAKEAWAY 2: Telco-grade generative AI is largely a matter of early R&D and risky POC
Despite a lot of hype and fanfare, generative AI didn’t make a material presence. If it did, it was rare. What is clear is that telco-grade generative AI has a long way to go although Amdocs, Nokia, and Microsoft touted their offerings ranging from call center assistants to security management.
A year after the advent of CoPilots and Duets, the vast majority of generative AI applications is in early product R&D or being offered as previews to support early POCs by end users.
Without naming names, it was our general observation that best practices have yet to be formulated for reliable and trustworthy application of generative AI technologies in the telco sector. It was difficult to find instances where the technology was reliable enough for production use especially in the operator’s network.?
Fine tuning of models and the application of RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) seem to be leading many projects toward narrow functions versus broader functions that tend to be more heavily inflicted with the limitations of generative AI. Yes, we mean hallucinations, drift, etc. On the other hand, this may be the important lesson that is being learned through these early explorations with generative AI – what GenAI tech can’t do yet and possibly ever.
We suspect that when MWC 2025 rolls around the industry will face the biggest enigma and dilemma?of the year, generative AI monetization. Fortunately, this won’t be as pressing a problem for telcos as it will be for the hyperscalers and service providers who will be hard pressed to flip a return on their massive investments in AI HPC infrastructure and the data centers that house them.
Further downstream, telco vendors banking on their generative AI offerings to boost their top lines will need to demonstrate benefit for the customers that they will be willing to pay for. There is little evidence of this happening.?
It was our observation that generative AI will not be easy to monetize. Amdocs’ Group President of Technology and Head of Strategy,?Anthony Goonetilleke,?stated at MWC 2024 that the company would be offering its generative AI as a standard feature at no additional charge.?
This unwillingness or inability of ISVs to charge customers for GenAI features reflects what we saw with other ISVs offering GenAI augmentation of their products. Though ISVs such as Service Now offer subscriptions for their Now Assist, there is little visibility as to how well these GenAI agents are monetized and their cost to serve. ?There was at best a hazy near-term view on monetization (or uplift) beyond the POC or pilot.
Time will tell how sustainable this challenged monetization situation?will be given the extremely high cost of AI HPC compute and platform services?which will inevitably hit the bottom line of these ISVs and service providers in some significant form unless subsidized.
Indeed, it is early days for generative AI as?everyone?continues to learn about its limitations beyond the hype.
TAKEAWAY 3: 5G was largely an absentee technology and that is not a good thing?
It seems that the industry officially shot itself in the 5G foot setting expectations all around beyond what the 3GPP roadmap and the market has been able to deliver. Consequently, it seems that 5G was the pariah of MWC 2024. There was little mention of it other than some reluctant utterings.?
Needless to say, last year’s darling of the ball, 6G, was simply a no show.
It is apparent that the industry has reached a stage of detrimental disillusionment at a time when the number of 5G smartphones that support at least Release 16 features has reached what could be argue critical mass in some markets such as the U.S. where 5G handsets make up 72.9% of subs, 47.9% in North East Asia, ?42.3% in Western Europe, and 28.2% globally according to?Ericsson’s Mobility Report 2024.?
Sadly, Qualcomm’s launch of their new?Snapdragon X80?was met with little fanfare and attention despite the significant AI augmentation (5G AI Processor Gen 2) and Release 17 and 18 features of the company’s latest modem-RF system. This is the fourth generation of Release 16+ modems going into handsets starting from premium to lower tiers as well as fixed wireless applications.
Simply put, the 5G-ready-and-able installed base continues to expand rapidly presenting operators in a broadening range of markets with the opportunity to capitalize on 5G features by making the transition to 5G SA.
The loudest 5G voice in the eight halls of Fira this year was probably Huawei which beat its 5.5G drum resoundingly as it showcased industrial applications that it has deployed for its customers in China.?
Some analysts like to make fun of Huawei’s 5.5G proposal but over the years it has proven to be a practical blueprint for 5G Advanced with a notable focus what neXt Curve observed as important considerations for industrial requirements such as uplink performance and reliability. ?
Huawei went silent on 5G three years ago at the apex of 5G hype with Huawei Rotating Chairman at the time, Eric Xu, going as far as dismissing it. Some of that early 5G dismissal may have been due to scrutiny from Washington, but it was timed well with the company’s pivot toward industrial enablement largely in China (link).
Huawei’s re-emphasis of 5.5G in the last two years should be a wakeup call especially as the industry anticipates 5G Advanced features set up in the commercialization pipeline.?
5G detrimental disillusionment is not where the industry should be. We hope that there is an urgently needed resetting of 5G as John Smee , SVP of Engineering at Qualcomm, and I discussed in our coffee talk last year (link).?
TAKEAWAY 4: Private 5G networks are going pop up? Will QOE trucks be a thing?
Private 5G was the talk of the town in 2022 with high hopes that it would take off in 2023. As we prognosticated, private 5G struggled and continues to find its legs even in markets with share/unlicensed spectrum such as CBRS in the U.S. and 3.7 GHz in Germany despite what seemed like traction from Nokia.?
The mantra for private 5G has been that it needs to be as simple and easy to deploy and manage as Wi-Fi. This has led to a great deal of progress in the condensing of the core and baseband into compact units such as those featured by most of the big vendors including Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, and Huawei.
An unintended but potentially catalytic consequence of this shrinking of the RAN footprint has spurred innovations and possibilities for carrier-integrated private 5G networks using portable cell sites in a box or small rig.
For example, ZTE showcased its?Indoor 5G-A CampSite?which is a suitcase-sized 5G Advanced network in a box?geared toward use in broadcast and XR with a quick setup of less than an hour. ZTE claims this tiny cell site in a cart provides?2,500 square meter coverage, providing up to 6Gbps downlink or 4Gbps uplink, with ultra-low latency of 4ms.
DT featured its?“Cell Tower to Go”?that is a portable radio mast with a sectorized antenna that comes with a mobile transmission unit that fits in a 1.6m x 2m x 2.6m container for deployment on corporate?campuses, stadiums, and to augment coverage and capacity of existing cell sites across their network.
Back in 2023, we attended the NAB Show and stumbled upon?Neutral Wireless which exhibited at the 100th anniversary of the show. Samuel Yoffe and Malcom Brew of Neutral Wireless presented on the role of pop-up non-public 5G networks in live production environments. On May 6, 2023, a couple of weeks after the NAB Show,?Neutral Wireless stood up the largest temporary private 5G SA network to support broadcasters during King Charles’ coronation?using Ofcom’s n77 shared spectrum.?
This portable cell site model becomes very interesting with 5G SA as operators?in markets where there is no unlicensed or shared spectrum?can lease spectrum or a network slice to temporary network operators servicing broadcasters covering events and other use cases DT, Neutral Wireless and other are exploring.?
Who knows? Private 5G might take off with a cell site in a truck. Think about it.
TAKEAWAY 5: Carrier-grade AI innovation basks in the light of generative AI hype
While generative AI struggled to make a substantial impression outside of early product R&D, POCs, and pilots, the non-generative AI progress benefited from the limelight of hype that shone brightly on its transformer-based?brethren.
Much of this progress is due to some progress seen with the adoption of SMOs (Service Management & Orchestration) frameworks/tools and the non-real time RICs (RAN Intelligent Controller) of O-RAN and non-O-RAN varieties that will serve as residences of rAPPs and their higher-level equivalents.
Late last year, Aira Technologies introduced their RANGPT platform/framework that leverages GPT-4 to augment observability and assisted diagnosis and configuration of the network. GenAI functions are baked into the RAN management workflow that summarize network state and diagnostics and use GenAI code generation to pump out network configuration scripts based on resolution recommendations.
RANGPT and other similar offerings are still work-in-progress and depend on the quality of non-GenAI engineering and capability that Aira showcased at MWC 2023 at the AWS stand and reintroduced at MWC 2024 with a GPT overlay (link).
Given that sustainability continues to be a hot topic in the industry, Aira’s dynamic network energy management rApp seems to be that AI solution with the highest potential impact and frankly transcends what we have seen any GenAI function contribute in the network to date.?
It is becoming increasingly apparent that if you can’t get the non-generative AI working, you can’t substantially capitalize on a generative AI overlay. You are just summarizing low quality, fragmented insights and not augmenting the system in a meaningful or valuable way.
In our view, we are still quite a long way from any form of autonomous networks in spite of the advent of generative AI.?
We are happy to hear from anyone who thinks they have cracked the non-theoretical code, especially from bold explorers like Aira Technologies who are testing the boundaries and possibilities of what emerging AI tech can do to further the intelligence of networks and their operation.
TAKEAWAY 6: IT and CT convergence continue to be the nexus of game-changing innovation from AI HPC to edge AI
Oddly, there was a lot of AI HPC and heavy edge computing being demonstrated at MWC 2024 at different scales. In particular Huawei, leaned into the convergence of IT and CT technologies exhibiting a range of AI HPC solutions for enterprise data centers and edge infrastructure.?
Despite being constrained in its access to leading edge semiconductor manufacturing due to U.S. embargo, Huawei seems to be doubling down on its deep expertise in networking to scale its AI computing solutions with emerging solutions for 800GE switching and optical interconnects within and between data centers. A great example of this convergence of IT and CT tech into AI HPC is CloudEngine 16800-X which Huawei introduced last year under the banner of?“first 800GE data center switch”?sporting up to 288 800GE ports.
While Marvell didn’t showcase their AI interconnect solutions at MWC 2024, they did emphasize what they saw is the rapidly growing importance of networking in scaling AI supercomputing at their industry analyst conference late last year especially as generative AI models continue to get larger. Last year, the company introduced their?Teralynx 10 Ethernet switch for data center supporting up to 64 800Gbps ports. ?
Emerging classes of massive LLM (Large Language Model) and MOE (Mixture of Expert) HPC systems will require larger high bandwidth?memory as well as high speed, reliable connections to ensure durable and high-performance operations across AI accelerator nodes for training and inference workloads.
No, AI HPC is not just about the accelerator. Sorry!
TAKEAWAY 7: The AI PC finds itself but not in pictures
Devices other than the smartphone have largely been ancillary at MWC for a couple of decades now. The PC has had a historically passive presence as the industry struggled to push the cellular laptop which continues to find the mainstream elusive.
This year, Qualcomm took advantage of MWC 2023 to make the event about on-device AI, in particular the AI PC, given the imminent launch of the Snapdragon X Elite processor expected at the midpoint of this year. Intel, which launched its first AI PC processor, Core Ultra, back on the 14th of December of 2023 focused on other things such as vRAN/Open RAN and edge infrastructure.
Coming out of CES 2024 and coming into MWC 2024, analysts and the industry still struggle with what the AI PC is and why it matters. It seems that the industry itself struggles with the definition with 微软 setting a floor of 40 TOPS of NPU compute as the minimum specification for an AI PC. I guess we will see how long that holds.
It happens that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processor could be the only chip that can bring about the AI PC with 45 TOPS of unmatched NPU performance. Still, is that it? What does that NPU mean for the user who might not care which processor or coprocessor does what?
Qualcomm may have unintentionally stumbled closer to an answer with their demo of the Snapdragon X Elite’s NPU processing chops and AI-intensive rendering workloads in Blackmagic Design 's DaVinci Resolve. While the intended purpose of the demo was to benchmark the Snapdragon X Elite versus Intel’s latest Core Ultra AI PC processor, the results suggested that NPU compute could significantly accelerate a video rendering job that applies the AI-intensive Magic Mask function in DaVinci Resolve.
This will be a big deal for creators on the go if running AI-based creative workloads can be processed faster and more power efficiently on NPUs than on GPUs. It’s an argument that still needs to be made and that hopefully Qualcomm will prove.
A differentiated NPU capability could imply big benefits for the creator on the go as new generative AI features and functions come to PC laptops to augment their workflows and reduce rendering times. This will mean more and is tangible to the creator than semi-usable generative AI pictures and content.
Someone just needs to do that benchmark to show that the NPU matters.
TAKEAWAY 8: Open RAN Squid Game Round 3 – Hybrid RAN takes a front seat to Open RAN
The Open RAN Squid Game is still on and entering a very interesting phase in which the operators have taken the helm of the conversation versus the vendors who have heavily dictated the discourse for the last several years.?
We managed to engage with all the leading RAN vendors including Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung who are taking a blended approach to current and future opportunities tuned to the specific requirements of operators. As these “incumbent” players engage and invest in the Open RAN movement, they appear to do so recognizing the need to provide operators with a mix of traditional (purpose-built solutions) and “O-RAN ready” and “O-RAN compliant” solutions.
It is becoming ever clearer that Open RAN is in the eye of the operator and as we have been positing for four years now. Open RAN is an architectural decision by the operator.
In our chat with Yossi Cohen , newly appointed President of Ericsson North America, emphasized the Cat B ULPI (Uplink Performance Improvement) fronthaul variations are essential in allowing Open RAN players to play in the present and future of “brownfield” RAN modernization as it addresses the fronthaul bandwidth challenges that most operators have today and will likely have well into the future.
Yossi added that the ULPI interface allows Open RAN to compete with Chinese RAN players globally who continue to capitalize on the advantages of purpose-built RAN platforms. This development has big implications for the Chinese vendors who don’t have the advantage of access to the most advanced semiconductor technology and could face a growing number of Western RAN vendors and radio makers who are better positioned to drive differentiation with competitive O-RAN architectures, hardware, and software.
This could be a boon for staunch Open RAN purists such as Mavenir who collaborated with Qualcomm in designing their new Open Beam mMIMO 32TRX AAU that supports both Cat B ULPI interfaces variations using Qualcomm’s QRU100 platform (link). In our view, the Mavenir + Qualcomm collaboration is an important vector of competition and innovation that expands the value proposition of Open RAN as well as the mindset.
Yet, the Open RAN Squid Game is still on.?
The most telling statement made at MWC 2024 for the future of Open RAN was by Woojune Kim , President of Samsung Networks, who responded to my question during an analyst Q&A session by stating, “You can turn up for football tryouts, but not everyone makes it on the team.”?
A true Open RAN Squid Game comment if there ever was one.?
TAKEAWAY 9: SMO is the gateway to the future or RAN and RAN modernization
Last year and the year prior, the excitement about the near- and the non-real time RIC hit a fever pitch with high hopes set for many of the rApp and xApp developers such as Cohere seeing their day in the sun. The going has been slower than expected.
As we noted in our overview of last year’s 5G Americas Analyst Conference, the SMO is becoming recognized as the key instrument for operators in modernizing their RAN infrastructure toward a more O-RAN-ish flavor. Several operators we spoke to in Barcelona regard the SMO to be an essential integration platform for making their infrastructure Open RAN-ready.
Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Qualcomm have gotten the memo having offered SMO solutions that support both open as well as purpose-built RANs for a few years now. Good examples are Ericsson Intelligent Automation Platform (EIAP) and Qualcomm’s Edgewise (acquired Cellwise SMO) which tout their support for multi- vendor Open RAN as well as vRAN and proprietary RAN.
This is the pivot that we are also seeing with many of the network software players who initially banked on the prospects and hype of a burgeoning xApps and rApps economy, recognizing that the SMO is where the first order of integration and automation will likely happen given the still sparse deployments of Open RANs in the world and the growing number of operators making moves toward Open RAN and Open RAN-ready.
TAKEAWAY 10: The intelligent?RAN is the emerging future of edge AI infrastructure
It just happens that the RAN is the most intense edge infrastructure supporting the most intense edge computing model between the radio and the smartphone.
Interestingly, as the RAN goes through its virtual, cloud and Open RAN transformations, traditional IT tech vendors are learning a great deal about edge computing and the management of edge infrastructures as they help operators build out their next generation RAN infrastructure.
Intel is codifying its experience working with operators and telco vendors not only in its new generation of Xeon Scalable processors with Granite Rapids and Sierra Forest but in Intel’s Edge Platform which was formerly codenamed Project Strata and unveiled at Intel Innovation 2023.
Intel’s Edge Platform is positioned as a comprehensive edge infrastructure management and service orchestration stack that not only enables operators and edge IaaS providers to manage large, distributed fleets of edge infrastructure resources but develop, test, and orchestrate AI workloads and applications across edge nodes (link).
Lenovo is Intel’s initial OEM partner working to integrate Intel’s Edge Platform into their own edge infrastructure computing and management offerings to foster and accelerate edge computing modernization and innovation in vertical applications beyond the RAN (link).?
Intel’s Edge Platform represents an evolution of what Dell Technologies and 风河 jointly launched last year, Dell’s Telecom Infrastructure Blocks, which shares the common ambition of bringing automation to edge infrastructure and edge cloud deployment and management.
As we look forward to intelligent automation and networks in the sparse mentions of 6G, the RAN is becoming a crucible for edge AI. It is clear that with Intel’s Edge Platform, Intel intends to shape the future of edge AI in the RAN as well as across verticals such as retail, transportation and logistics, and so on.
If it has to do with AI, you will probably see NVIDIA looking for a seat at the table. Though they didn’t have a presence on the exhibition floor of the Fira, NVIDIA has taken its own initiative in shaping the future of the intelligent RAN by spearheading the AI-RAN Alliance which it is establishing with ten cofounding members.
Most notably, Intel is missing as is Mavenir which collaborated with NVIDIA in developing Aerial.
The race for edge AI dominance is on.
TAKEAWAY 11: Open Gateway is a collection of APIs waiting for 5G network maturity
Oddly, many folks at MWC still think and say that an API is something you can sell. This has been a persistent misconception that I have pointed out for a few years in discussions about API economies and such. It is only of late that a small number of articles have emerged pointing this issue out. APIs can be standardized to define how to operationally monetize, but they are not what you monetize.
Last year, the GSMA announced the Open Gateway Initiative with the vision of fostering a global platform/marketplace for developers to access 5G network services. In order to make this happen, Project CAMARA was formed as a Linux Foundation project to standardize a set of APIs that would help operators globally monetize their 5G networks.
It’s not the API that matters, it is the underlying service or function which are largely undifferentiated at the moment due to the state of 5G network deployments around the world. With the exception of a handful of operators in markets such as the U.S., Japan, China, South Korea, 5G SA deployments are relatively sparse with many operators taking on a wait-and-see attitude toward investing anymore in their 5G transformations.
Yet, 5G SA deployments will be instrumental in delivering foundational 5G features and the 5G Advanced features that are queued up for commercialization in the next few year.
Here in lies the problem that we continue to see at MWC this year. Without the global or even regional 5G network maturity to meet the minimum specification for a collection of yet-to-be-discovered “killer applications” riding the collective network, the industry will have to settle with more functional services such as not-so-novel fraud prevention, and eSIM swap that were common use cases at MWC. Will these services be enough to create the monetization opportunity that the GSMA and its members are imagining?
I doubt it.
This is why neXt Curve emphasized 5G modernization as a key focus for vendors and operators at MWC 2023. Instead, generative AI and aspirational intelligent automation dominated.
It was encouraging to see AWS partner with Vonage in building a fraud prevention service that integrates network functions with AWS AI-based fraud detection capabilities (link). Unfortunately, these types of converged services don’t build a case for 5G modernization or the monetization proposition. They could have the unintended consequence of pitching the status quo.
Currently, 5G network maturity and capabilities are highly fragmented and lumpy globally and even at the municipal level. In this early phase of the Open Gateway Initiative operators with more advanced 5G deployments will likely go solo and take the lead in providing developers with access to network services based on advanced 5G features such as enhanced uplink. In the past year we have seen T- Mobile, Verizon, and Deutsche Telekom launch network APIs directly to developers.
Service aggregators such as Vonage, Nokia, Twilio, and others may have to wait longer for the opportunity to broker high value 5G network services across domains and networks across regions, and around the globe.
TAKEAWAY 12: The smartphone is still king. Innovation could keep it that way
There are many efforts in play this year to dethrone the smartphone as the device that is the epicenter of our connected digital lives. Many of these attempts have been stymied by a steady pipeline of innovation that continues to evolve the smartphone and entrench it at the center of our lives.
The attempted coup started last year with the unveiling of Humane Inc.’s Pin which is a Star Trek-like AI-infused communicator pin akin to that Picard and crew donned as they romped around the galaxy on the U.S.S. Enterprise. The device generally suffers from the problem of not being able to do anything that a smartphone can’t do but not being able to so many things a smartphone can do (link). Besides, why not a smartwatch instead of a pin? ?
Deutsche Telekom (DT) showcased a concept Gen AI-powered smartphone in collaboration with Qualcomm and Brain.ai which did a good job of demonstrating the potential of today’s smartphone operating systems (yes, iOS, Android, and Harmony OS) to support app-less user experiences (link).?
We see elements of the requisite features today in widgets, notifications, and automation frameworks that can serve as the interfaces between app services and an on-device generative AI engine (link). We are already seeing this reinvention in motion with Samsung Galaxy AI unveiled at Galaxy Unpacked earlier this year (link) as well as Apple’s foray into transformers on device augmenting AutoCorrect early last year (link).?
For the most part, these LLM-based designs are chatbot “portal” concepts similar to smart speaker frameworks such as Alexa. You may recall Skills which provide the Alexa voice assistant with interfaces to application services that allowed you to query things and actuate devices in your home.
While Motorola Mobility’s bendable smartphone concept stole the spotlight, Motorola is innovating by integrating AI features to further enhance the user’s experience with MotoAI (link) which is a suite of on-device Gen AI features that include mobile doc scan, AI text summarization, and privacy content obfuscation.
Furthermore, Motorola’s Smart Connect, Samsung’s One UI, and Honor’s Magic OS have made significant strides in enabling seamless cross-device experiences that fortify the smartphone’s position as the nexus of personalization, utility, and orchestration within a user’s personal computing environment.
Will the smartphone be replaced? Probably not anytime soon and that just might be OK.?
TAKEAWAY 13:?Chinese vendors give the silent treatment
Last year, Huawei and ZTE were pretty open. This year, the Chinese tech giants were much less outgoing and notably focused on customer meetings which apparently were many as their booths were packed throughout the course of the week. Earl Lum and I were among a small number of analysts who had access to both the Huawei and ZTE stands.
With geopolitics notably deteriorating and efforts by Chinese firms to garner trust amid intensifying measures by Washington to curtail their technological progress proving largely futile, the companies focused on their products, engineering, and technology which continue to advance seemingly unabated as both vendors exhibited industry-leading product innovation and engineering.
For example, ZTE showcased a Uni-Radio that enables site simplification with 10 times fewer radios The company claims that the Uni-Radio (A+P) achieves highly simplified integration of 7-bands into 1 with a dual-band AAU complemented with their 5-band UBR and FDD full-band antenna.
Huawei and ZTE continue to be formidable competitors unconstrained by the trials and tribulations of the Open RAN movement while engineering and innovating around technology constraints imposed by U.S. sanctions.
It is apparent that Huawei, in particular, intends to lead in the next half of the 5G evolution. The company’s formidable footprint and R&D chops in the IT, CT and the industrial vertical domains will likely keep it a force to be reckoned with.
TAKEAWAY 14: The cost of intelligence is the unspoken?sustainability debate
Intelligent networks and operations have been hot topics at Mobile World Congress for the past few years originating from the pre-Gen AI AI hype. Interestingly there has been little talk of the cost of intelligence. We tend to focus on the benefits rather than the costs and the impact on sustainability.
This year, thanks to generative AI which is becoming known for its tremendous consumption of energy, there was a notable and heightened interest in sustainable data center and edge infrastructure technologies that were present but largely dismissed at MWC 2023.
Early last year, we had the opportunity to visit the DreamWorks Animation Studios in Burbank, California, to tour their rendering farm. The event was hosted by Lenovo and DreamWorks showcasing an on-prem data center running Lenovo’s Neptune warm water-cooled servers (link).
This year, Lenovo has brought their Neptune cooling system for various hybrid cloud applications improving the density of compute by allowing processors and accelerators to run closer to peak for sustained periods of time.
Last year we bumped into UK-based Icetope at the 惠普企业服务 stand. Icetope offers a wide range of precision liquid cooled servers including their KUL RAN which is a hybrid liquid-to-air cooled system. Unlike Lenovo, Icetope uses dielectric fluid that is administered in a targeted way to cool processors and accelerators in a sealed chassis (link).
These alternative cooling systems will become essential elements of network infrastructure system designs especially since NVIDIA has tipped its hat in bringing their power hungry GPUs to the RAN as the company asserts its EGX Aerial RAN solution (link) and takes a stake in the future of the RAN.
TAKEAWAY 15: Some vendors got the immersive reality memo but not many
The 苹果 Vision Pro has forced the XR industry to take a hard look at itself, even drawing an awkward reaction from Mark Zuckerberg who took to social media to plead his case for how the Quest 3 was the “better product”.
The reality is the Vision Pro has ignited the immersive content creation community, namely 3D videographers and content creators, who are looking at the imminent future and possible revolution of immersive media that they have long awaited. But it seems only a few operators and vendors at MWC 2024 tuned into this.
The Huawei booth was one of a small handful that had a 3D media and communications section. Others were still wallowing in VR which continues to struggle with mainstream adoption and relevance.
Huawei had a section in their massive stand dubbed “New Services Monetization" that featured a number of 3D applications including 3D gaming, 3D photo studio. Immersive reality services had enough gravity to be mentioned in Huawei President of ICT Sales & Service Li Peng’s keynote at MWC 2024.
Ever the XR innovator, Lenovo once again showcased their potential in the immersive media space with their ThinkVision 3D display and ThinkReality VRX headset. While 3D displays are not new technologies, they are drawing increased interest as a platform for consuming and interacting with immersive content.
Improved gaze tracking has enhanced the immersive experience and visual quality of these monitors. Companies such as Leia are bringing 3D displays to tablets as well as smartphones.
Indeed, we are seeing an emerging trend in the Android ecosystem from single pinhole forward-facing camera back toward multi camera and sensor arrays akin to Apple’s TrueDepth camera. Over the years, the Android ecosystem has deprecated LiDAR and other sensors that could support the capture and rendering of 3D and volumetric content.
This transition is being largely led by Chinese vendors who are keenly focused on the camera and tend to track Apple's moves closely.
For example, Honor’s Magic6 Pro sports a 3D depth sensing forward-facing camera array capable of gaze tracking and potential support for 3D display features in the future.
Huawei’s controversial Mate 60 also features a reversion to a more complex camera and sensor array for its forward-facing camera which could support future 3D display functions.
As the Vision Pro and a new generation of immersive reality content production ramps up, it is likely that we will see more device OEMs revisiting their forward-facing cameras to position themselves for what looks like a long-awaited era of 3D/immersive media AND communications.
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Many thanks to all the?companies?that talked to neXt Curve at MWC 2024.
高通 , Amazon Web Services (AWS) , 联想 , Ciena , 甲骨文 , 爱立信 , Cradlepoint, part of Ericsson , 诺基亚 , 中兴 , 华为 , Mavenir , 摩托罗拉 , HONOR , 三星电子 , Samsung Networks , Aira Technologies , VMware , Ataya , 红帽 , 惠普企业服务 , 微软 , Prodapt , CommScope , T-Mobile , SK电讯 , Deutsche Telekom , SynaXG , Monogoto , 谷歌 , Google Cloud , 亚马逊 , 思科 , 博通 , Arqit , 思博伦通信 , 英特尔 , Blues , Quectel , 联发科技
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Tech Industry Advisor & Realist dedicated to making you constructively uncomfortable. Ring the bell ?? and subscribe to next-curve.com for the tech and industry insights the matter!
1 个月I highlighted in my recap of #mwc2024 that pop-up #5G could be a really cool deployment model that could open 5G to a broader range of more ephemeral but high value applications. T-Mobile just dropped this. Henry Chalian https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/t-mobile-announces-5g-on-demand
Tech Industry Advisor & Realist dedicated to making you constructively uncomfortable. Ring the bell ?? and subscribe to next-curve.com for the tech and industry insights the matter!
3 个月I am so glad I didn't hype this category of nuevo #genai gadget up. I mention my perspective in this MWC 2024 report. I also predicted what Apple has now announced with Apple Intelligence and the continuing role of the smartphone at the center of our lives. Remember, neXt Curve for the tech and industry insights that matter. ?? Gizmodo article by Dua Rashid https://gizmodo.com/humanes-ai-pin-is-seeing-more-returns-than-sales-report-says-2000484327
All of us in the industry have a job to do on topic #3 to kill the two big myths i) 5G was a mild success in the first half of the deployment cycle ii) the second half is about lift-and-coast to 6G
OmniFuturist | Media Tech Comms Innovation and Analysis | Advanced UI Design | Composer | Audio Visual Synthesist
8 个月Received the MWC 2024 Highlights, which appear to be very little, and Insights via your email newsletter Leonard, and have to say it's easily the most comprehensive review of a technology event I've ever read! You must have had a sizeable team helping you put it together. My own take out from an initial scan, is there's far more hype in the AI, 5G/ 6G, mobile phone sectors than first imagined! They are all pumping up potentialities with little to no realised benefits. So that's absolutely awesome news! Anyway, just wanted to say thanks and I'll look forward to your next newsletter. In the meantime, I'm going to completely devour the one on MWC. ??????
Tech Industry Advisor & Realist dedicated to making you constructively uncomfortable. Ring the bell ?? and subscribe to next-curve.com for the tech and industry insights the matter!
8 个月Earlier in the year, John Smee, SVP of Engineering at Qualcomm and I had a chat over coffee about how we are overshooting on the disappointment that many consider #5G. It's important to keep in mind that it was the hype that disappointed, not the technology. Find out what I and John think are the emerging opportunities as 5G gets real in the midst of detrimental disillusionment! TAKE A LISTEN ?? https://www.buzzsprout.com/1654726/14751700 Remember to subscribe to the neXt Curve reThink Podcast!!