What to Expect at MWC 2024

What to Expect at MWC 2024

The Six Five team discusses What to Expect at MWC 2024.

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Transcript:

Daniel Newman: So we’re on our way out there. And listen, I’ve been on a few pre-briefings, you’ve been on a few pre-briefings. This is my 10th or 11th MWC now, I think every year except for the ones that got canceled. So what are going to be the themes, Pat? Top of mind, 5G, I know it’s crazy. In 2018 or ’17, I was doing 5G readiness assessments going into Mobile World Congress. We’re still, in some ways, doing 5G readiness. By the way, we didn’t even talk about the fact that AT&T was down for a lot of people all day yesterday. How crazy is that?

Patrick Moorhead: So dumb.

Daniel Newman: Not only is it dumb, but our lives are completely at a stop when you’re not connected. I don’t know when this happened, but all of a sudden I don’t know how to function if I’m not connected. That’s going to be a big theme here at MWC. You’re going to see the connecting of everything. So we kind of have heard about IOT and industry and all these things, but the bottom line is the importance of networking, the importance of connectivity, the importance of the service provider networks and all the things that we’ve grown to become dependent on is what makes and enables us to use this technology every day. So we’ve got 5G, we’ve got connectedness. Something that we spend some time on always is, of course, they always spend some time on the manufacturing side of things. Smart manufacturing industry, I expect that to be a continuation.

You’ll see things like network slicing and different opportunities to create secure connectivity at the edge. And Pat, AI, I waited till last just because I felt like it was so obvious to me, but AI is in the headlines. Whether we’re mobile or in the data center, an on premises, AI will continue to be a massive topic. It will be a topic from the keynote stage for sure at Mobile World Congress. And I’m looking forward, by the way, to spending time with the usual suspects. We’ll spend time with Qualcomm and Intel, Cisco and HPE, Dell. But then there’s also a lot of cool new companies that are there. There’s like Snowflake, are very involved. Microsoft, very involved. IBM, very involved. And so we’ll see a good diversity. And Pat, we’ll be running quickly and fast. The Six Five will be on the ground. And of course, you and I will be there analyzing and advising the markets. So there’s my take. Quick and to the point.

Patrick Moorhead: Yeah, I’m just going to end with, it’s AI, AI, AI in a very similar way that we saw at CES, just in a different form. And it takes really two forms. The first form is how can AI be used in products and services to improve the outcome? So for instance, the way that traffic is handled either at the base station or at the core network or even on the edge. And then there’s, how are these B-to-B companies helping other companies, let’s say, accelerate AI traffic that goes from the edge device to the edge, to the core switching network or the base station? And those are literally going to be the two themes. That’s going to cross the industrial IoT. It’s going to be talking automotive. We’re going to see consumer markets. But that is undoubtedly going to be the push.

Now the interesting part is, a lot of the algorithms that really make these types of workloads better are more machine learning than generative AI. At the end point, totally generative AI. But I have yet to see what generative AI can do, let’s say, in the network as opposed to machine learning. But I’m excited to get there. I leave on Saturday, I think like you do. And we’ll be there for most of the week.

Author Information

Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.

From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.

A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.

An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.

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