The revelation in 2024 that Arm was planning to develop its own silicon sent chills down the spines of its licensees. However, its AGI CPU announcement allayed those fears and showed a pathway for the company’s ambition to become an AI silicon player without trampling its licensees.

AGI CPU is carving out a sizable $100 billion slice of the gigantic $1 trillion AI infrastructure silicon market, going head-to-head against its traditional rivals Intel and AMD. But more importantly, it’s accomplishing that without directly competing with behemoths such as Nvidia, hyperscalers, or Arm’s ecosystem partners. With Meta as the lead customer and collaborator, and support from more than 50 players, Arm positions itself as a formidable AI player.  

While the ecosystem benefits from AGI CPU in the short term, Arm’s future silicon ambitions will decide the former’s fate. 

AI infrastructure market dominated by GPUs, with room for CPUs

In the AI data center silicon market, Nvidia and its GPUs get all the limelight. However, the landscape is much more complex and nuanced, with many architectures, topologies, and players. At a very high level, it can be divided into GPU and AI accelerators, CPUs, and interconnects. For our discussion, only the first two are relevant.

By all accounts, GPU and AI accelerators account for the largest share of the market. Currently, the GPU market is dominated by Nvidia, with AMD playing second fiddle. The AI accelerators market is a mix of hyperscalers, including Google, AWS, Microsoft, and Meta, developing their own silicon, largely for their own use, and merchant silicon players such as Groq (owned by Nvidia), Cerebras, Tenstorrent, and others.

Before the AI boom, CPUs with x86 architecture were the staple for data centers, dominated by Intel. Even today, Intel holds a large share of the CPU market, followed by AMD. Arm architecture is gaining traction. Many hyperscalers have their own Arm-based CPUs, which they again primarily utilize for their own needs. AWS’s Graviton and Microsoft’s Cobalt are some good examples. Nvidia’s Vera CPU is also based on the Arm architecture. There are also some merchant players such as Ampere and Fujitsu.

But yesterday’s cloud data centers are rapidly transitioning to AI data centers. Initially, even now, the focus is on training, where GPUs and AI accelerators run the bulk of the workload. But the shift toward inference and the growth of agentic AI are making CPUs important again.

During the announcement keynote, Arm CEO Rene Haas presented an informative slide highlighting the role of CPUs in modern agentic data centers.

The agentic data center is where a user interacts with specialized AI agents. (Source: Tantra Analyst)

In cloud data centers, CPUs managed all the queries. In AI data centers, queries are answered by tokens generated by GPUs. But when we move to agentic AI, the system doesn’t just answer queries; agents perform complex, multi-step tasks based on those queries. Orchestration of all those agents and their tasks is performed primarily by CPUs.

Agentic AI is growing rapidly (e.g., massive popularity of OpenClaw). Arm projects that close to 120 million CPUs will be needed for a 1 GW AI data center. Given power constraints in data centers, more efficient CPUs will be in demand. Again, Arm projects the market at around $100 billion by 2030, a sizable portion of the overall AI data center silicon market that Arm aims to serve.

AGI CPU: a smart balancing act between customers, competitors, and licensees

Arm should be commended for carving out a sizable market without making most of its licensees utterly unhappy or competing with the giants of the AI infrastructure world. First, it is not competing with GPU giants Nvidia and AMD, or hyperscalers building their own AI accelerators. This is a stark contrast to other merchant silicon vendors trying to compete with GPUs using Arm-based AI accelerators.

Second, it is not directly competing with hyperscalers that make their own CPUs. From the outside, AGI CPUs might seem like direct competition to Google, AWS, and Microsoft’s own CPUs—but not so, when looking more closely. One of the main reasons these hyperscalers started developing their own CPUs is the inability of the x86 architecture to scale power efficiency and its slow evolution.

Additionally, these hyperscalers aren’t selling their CPUs to others. So, AGI CPU won’t directly compete with them in the marketplace. On the contrary, if AGI CPU performs as well as Arm claims, they might even consider using it. And just as Meta closely collaborated on the AGI CPU, they might consider collaborating with Arm to create CPUs optimized for their workloads.

Most of these assertions are apparent from the slew of endorsements Arm has received for this launch, to the point that Nvidia CEO and senior executives from AWS and Google spoke during the keynote. The only exception is Ampere, against which AGI CPU will directly compete.

Arm is butting heads directly with Intel and AMD, who, as mentioned before, provide the majority of merchant CPUs to data centers today. Despite its recent strides, x86 is still not as power efficient as Arm. Arm shared impressive power and performance comparison charts during the event. Looking at the history of these architectures, the results look plausible. Additionally, Intel’s current fab and other challenges will only make this easy for Arm.

What AGI CPU means for Arm licensees, now and in the future

AGI CPU has, for the time being, calmed the nerves of Arm licensees. To my written questions regarding the effect of AGI CPU on licensees, Arm replied, “Neutrality and ecosystem openness remain foundational for Arm. We continue to provide broad and equal access to architecture, IP, and CSS, and the addition of silicon is meant to expand optionality, not reduce it. This model gives partners and customers flexibility to choose what works best for them, whether that is building custom silicon using Arm IP and CSS, or deploying Arm-designed silicon. It expands access to Arm technology rather than restricting it and reinforces our role as a neutral platform provider.”

But a lot depends on how wide Arm plans to spread its silicon net. AGI CPU has a clear long-term roadmap. But Arm was very cryptic about what comes beyond that, saying only that there’s a lot more to come, with a possible addressable market of more than $1 trillion by 2030.

In the short term, for most licensees, AGI CPU is likely to be very positive. It gives full legitimacy to the architecture in the AI data center space and accelerates the maturity of software, tools, and infrastructure. Arm’s EVP of Cloud AI business, Mohamed Awad, stated that Arm will contribute many foundational platform elements, software, validation, tooling, and other components to the Open Compute Project, which will benefit all licensees.

But $1 trillion is a staggering target. That might indicate that Arm’s silicon ambitions are going far beyond this intelligently carved-out market segment and extend to AI accelerators, edge AI, and even smartphones and compute devices. That will hit at the heart of almost every licensee’s market. And Arm’s entry there will fundamentally change the dynamics—even the possibility of licensees adopting alternatives more aggressively, such as RISC-V.

Closing thoughts

The AI and AI infrastructure markets are still in their infancy. The projected opportunity is massive, and there’s room for enough players. Hence, currently, everyone is treating everyone else as frenemies. There are many unknowns about how this will evolve, such as the quantum of training vs. inference, the growth of agentic AI, artificial general intelligence (AGI), edge AI, new architectures and topologies, and more.

It seems today’s demarcation between GPUs, CPUs, accelerators, etc., will blur, and AI will run across the stack. What is certain is that power will be at a premium. All these processors will ultimately have to compete for the fixed rack power envelope. And processors that deliver the best performance per watt for specific AI workloads will win. The future is interesting and exciting, for sure.

If you want to read more articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest tech industry news, sign up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.         

After many years of incremental performance improvements, Samsung introduced an interesting new hardware feature in its latest flagship Galaxy S26 Ultra — Privacy Display. This offers immediate, tangible benefits to all, especially privacy-sensitive and enterprise users.

I received a review unit at the Galaxy Unpacked event in San Francisco on Feb 25, 2026. It is a fantastic phone with tons of improvements to the camera, AI features, and, of course, the display.

There are complaints in the media about Galaxy S26 Ultra’s display not being bright enough, and some people with sensitive eyes experiencing eye fatigue and headaches. Because of that, this time, I took extra time (more than three weeks) to test and use the phone more rigorously before posting this review. I ran multiple tests comparing Galaxy S26 Ultra and S25 Ultra displays across various configurations and found negligible brightness loss with privacy ON and a noticeable loss with maximum privacy ON. However, once I configured it correctly (conditional privacy), had no issues, nor did I find the display brightness lacking. The summary of my findings and recommendations is in the table below, and the full details, including comparison pictures, are in my X (Twitter) and LinkedIn posts.

Check out our other flagship product reviews here

Industry’s first built-in Privacy Display

Today’s smartphones are a feast for peeping Toms, be it sitting on the planes, trains, meetings, or anywhere, where there are curious people around you. This is even more problematic for enterprise users, who often access confidential information from their phones. The only solution so far has been slapping a privacy screen on the display, which is a hassle and ruins the display experience. But no more, with S26 Ultra’s Privacy Display.

The new display uses two types of LEDs: one regular type that emits light in all directions, and another that emits light only in the front. When Privacy Mode is turned ON, only the new directional LEDs activate, blocking visibility from all sides except the front. Supporting privacy at the LED level allows activating privacy mode only when and where needed. For example, when viewing confidential or private content, only for selected apps, notifications, PIN, and password entry screens, etc (conditional privacy).  The feature is highly configurable, even allowing maximum privacy, which makes the viewing angle even narrower, with sharp roll off.

I was actually surprised by how often I use it. It was a lifesaver during my recent trip to Mobile World Congress. I was able to read all the embargoed press releases, NDA decks, emails with confidential information, etc., on my flight without worrying about someone peeking in. Without the S26 Ultra with the Privacy Display, I would have had to wait till I got off the plane to check them out. I wish such displays would soon come to laptops too. I can work worry-free anywhere. Another important benefit of this display over screens is that it blocks visibility from the top and bottom as well.

Since maximum privacy protection noticeably reduces screen brightness, it is best to use that mode only when needed. Most other times, set it to conditional privacy, so that you get the best of both options (bright display and adequate privacy).

Evolution toward Agentic AI Phone

Galaxy S25 graduated Galaxy AI from novelty to utility, and S26 takes it even further, eventually making it an Agentic AI Phone. S26 Ultra introduces new AI features and enhances and refines many existing ones.

The “Now Briefs” are made agentic and action-oriented. They now extract relevant information from messages, calendars, and other sources, learn behavior, understand routines and context, and offer useful, actionable suggestions.

There are useful new features, such as Call Screening and Scam Alert. As the name suggests, Call Screen receives the calls like your personal assistant and summarizes the content. This is super useful if you are like me and get lots of cold sales calls, mixed with some important ones. I use this feature at least a few times a day. Scam Alert monitors the discussion during the ongoing call and sends a visual alert if it detects any scam. I never got this alert, but it is extremely beneficial for the elderly and non-tech-savvy folks who are easily duped by online fraud.

Galaxy AI has become a somewhat confusing mix of Bixby and Google’s Gemini. Bixby is primarily used for tasks within the phone and can work without cloud connectivity (on-device processing only). Whereas Gemini is a universal chatbot that requires cloud connectivity. I use both of them quite extensively in my daily life.

Bixby has access to all the apps and settings on the phone, so it can execute multistep, multi-app tasks, like an agent. For example, you can ask it to set up a meeting with someone at a specific time on a specific day.  Bixby will find the person in the contacts app, schedule the meeting in the calendar app, and send the invite email in the mail app. Bixby was quite useful during MWC last week. I could easily search my mailbox for specific emails and meeting details, find overlaps, etc., while on the move, with just voice prompts, using the new Galaxy Buds4 Pro.  I could accomplish all this while Bixby is set for “device-only” data processing. Gemini can’t do any of this because it doesn’t have access to the apps.

But the confusion arises because Bixby can do most, if not all, of what Gemini does. I highly recommend that Samsung implement a single interface for Galaxy AI and hide the complexity of model selection from regular users. Perhaps AI agents will become that single interface. Meanwhile, I suggest using Bixby for on-device AI and Gemini for cloud AI.

Evolution to Agentic AI Phone is a journey, and we are at the early stages. Thanks to its SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen5 for Samsung, with a strong NPU, the S26 Ultra is already set for that journey.

Improved Camera, better editing, and creative tools

Camera improvements are a staple for any new phone. Keeping up with that S26Ultra brings a slew of camera enhancements, including Nitography. A wider camera aperture provides less grainy pictures in low-light conditions. Super-Steady Horizontal Lock feature provides excellent stabilization for video shoots, and many more. I used both features and observed a noticeable improvement compared to S25 Ultra.

Again, thanks to Snapdragon SoC, there are also tons of AI-based upgrades to photo and video editing tools, such as prompt-to-edit, generative erase, audio erase for both native and third-party apps, and many more. A new hardware-accelerated upscale engine sharpens both photos and videos.

 A new feature that allows you to change outfits or “clean up” spills on clothing in photos using generative AI. The new Creative Studio lets you sketch an idea or provide a prompt and turn it into a high-quality sticker, invitation, or personalized wallpaper directly in the gallery.

Suffice to say, the S25 Ultra is a must-have for anyone who is privacy-sensitive and for almost all enterprise users. It is also a desirable upgrade for anybody looking for a better performance and an AI-focused phone.

If you want to read more articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest tech industry news, sign up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.         

 

Projected retail food waste of $540 billion in 2026 is driving the adoption of improved RFID labels for perishables.

Spoiled food is a major contributor to the global sustainability challenge. It is an even bigger financial challenge in the retail food sector, where food waste losses are projected to reach a staggering $540 billion in 2026. Much of this waste comes from perishables such as meat, bakery, deli, and fresh produce. The strict expiry dates and the need for “farm fresh” products make perishable logistics highly complex. But the latest advancements in RFID label (“tags” in industry lingo) technology and economies of scale are beginning to solve that complexity to help dramatically reduce perishable food waste.

According to Avery Dennison, traditional RFID struggles within cold, high-moisture, and densely packed environments inherent to fresh food retail. To address this challenge, the company this week launched its AD IdentiFresh Inlay Series RFID labels for perishable food categories, which are powered by RFID manufacturer Impinj’s M800 series endpoint ICs and Gen2X enhancements.

Challenges in managing the logistics of perishables

The challenges of managing perishables are well known in the industry. These are high-velocity, experience-driven products that require frequent repositioning on shelves and price adjustments. For retailers, it is a constant struggle between high-cost manual inventory monitoring and selling before expiry or eating (pun intended) the cost of spoilage. Both significantly affect the bottom line.

RFID technology is not always conducive to tagging perishable products, for various reasons. For example, perishables are usually stored in extremely cold, high-humidity environments, in metal enclosures (fridges, freezers), and often packed in metal trays or foil, all of which are bad for RF signal propagation. These items are usually densely stocked, with unstructured shelf placements that are often disrupted by customers, requiring high-capacity, fast, and robust scanning. Traditional labels used for perishables were also too small for the RFID antennas. Moreover, the whole business operates on low-margin economics, so a good ROI is essential to make any solution viable.

Solving the RFID labeling challenge for perishable food

The wide adoption of RFID in the apparel and retail sectors had naturally piqued the food industry’s interest. This adoption is reducing RFID costs and making it viable for perishables, provided the technology challenges are addressed. That is exactly where Impinj’s M800-series ICs with Gen2X enhancements come into play.

Most modern RFID ICs comply with the industry standard  RFID Gen2v2 specification, published in 2013. But those specifications are not enough to address the unique challenges of perishables. Impinj has developed a set of features beyond these standards, called Gen2X, that are critical to enabling RFID labels for perishables.

As with many wireless systems, the backlink (tag to reader) is the limiting factor in RFID performance. Anything that improves backlinks will improve the overall performance. That’s what some Gen2X features do, while also improving scanning efficiency and reliability. Gen2X features include:

Gen2X Tag Reply Formatting: This changes the preamble structure and modulation of the backlink to make it more robust. Impinj claims this can improve the link budget by up to 6dB.

Gen2X Fast Re-inventory: This allows readers to suppress unnecessary replies for already-identified tags, accelerating re-inventory cycles (up to 100% faster).

Tag Quieting: This selects flags to quiet specific tag subgroups and prevent repeated responses from known tags, improving accuracy and efficiency in high-volume operations.

Gen2X Tag Selection: This enables readers to specify which tags respond during a Gen2X inventory scan and which remain silent, thereby reducing unwanted responses, minimizing RF congestion, and improving read accuracy in dense tag environments.

Power Boost: This increases the transmit power of readers via waveform shaping to improve tag sensitivity, extend range, and enhance reliability. Impinj claims this can deliver up to 2dB of additional effective power.

The broader range and improved sensitivity of Gen2X have enabled Avery Dennison to develop more performant antennas within the same footprint as today’s food labels. “Gen2X delivers meaningful improvements in speed, accuracy, and reliability, enabling high-performance RFID deployments, including challenging categories like fresh food,” said Impinj’s VP of endpoint ICs George Dyche. “As enterprises measure ROI, Gen2X support across tag ICs and readers is becoming essential for modern RFID systems.”

It’s worth noting that Gen2X is compatible with Gen2v2 specifications but needs support on both ends (reader and endpoint). Recognizing this, Impinj is collaborating with a broad ecosystem of vendors to accelerate adoption. The company is even licensing Gen2X royalty-free to reader manufacturers, and the company said it is also open to contributing broadly useful elements of Gen2X to the next version of the specifications.

RFID labels enable more automation, optimization, and AI

RFID labels for perishables not only reduce waste but also open up significant opportunities for automation and AI to optimize operations and maximize profits for retailers.

Accurate, fast inventorying helps retailers avoid the dilemma I mentioned earlier, allowing them to price and position perishables effectively to maximize revenue and minimize waste. Given the scale of today’s large food suppliers and grocery chains, even single-digit reductions in spoilage can have major benefits.

RFID labels, when used with overhead readers, enable supply chain automation, such as automated inward inventory management and cashless “grab and go” shopping. In the near future, AI models could ingest RFID data to improve demand forecasting, which is extremely crucial for perishables, as well as dynamically determine prices based on inventory, expiry dates, and other factors.

The AD IdentiFresh labels are an early proof point, and their success is very likely to further increase adoption, which in turn would contribute to reducing overall food waste. That means higher margins for retailers, and improved sustainability for the entire planet, a win-win situation indeed.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

 

Folding smartphones have been around for many years and are almost on the verge of becoming mainstream. But what these foldable screens mean for laptops was not clear. But thanks to some bold steps taken by PC market leader Lenovo, clear use cases and usable form factors are emerging. 

I have been using and testing the world’s first and only rollable laptop—ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable (I know, quite a mouthful), for a few weeks, and checked out new concepts such as Legion Pro Rollable and ThinkPad Rollable XD at CES 2026, as well as  ThinkBook VertiFlex and Auto Twist AIPC at IFA 2025. These highlight the trend and early target users, such as content creators, gamers, specific enterprise personas, and others. 

Bringing design innovation and excitement to laptops

Ever since their inception in the 1980s, laptops have always been clamshell rectangular boxes, with a display on one side and a keyboard on the other. Sure, thickness and weight have reduced, battery life has increased, display sizes have changed, performance has improved by magnitude, but the basic shape and look haven’t changed much. This is a far cry from how phones have evolved, from feature phones to keyboard phones (BlackBerry), touch screens, curved displays, and to the latest foldables. 

Lenovo has been trying to change that by introducing design innovation and breathing new life into the laptop category. It pioneered the 2-in-1 form factor with a 360-degree hinge in 2012, introduced the first commercial laptop with a vertical rollable display in 2025, and showcased a slew of rollable form factors at various trade shows. 

In a recent discussion on my Tantra’s Mantra podcast, Tom Butler, Lenovo’s VP of worldwide commercial portfolio, compared these new formfactors to concept cars that car companies demo at industry events. The concept devices may or may not be introduced as is, but the technologies and designs are surely commercialized in future products. 

Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable — world’s first rollable laptop

This was the first incarnation of the rollable laptop concept. I have been using this device for a few weeks and have also been talking to a few likely enterprise users about it. It looks like a regular 14-inch laptop, but its screen extends vertically to a 16.7-inch (diagonal) portrait-mode display. The concept was announced in 2022, the prototype was displayed at MWC in March 2025, and the commercial version quickly started shipping in June 2025. The laptop is currently sold out on the Lenovo site, primarily due to the limited production run. It is also discontinued, probably in preparation for its next version. Nonetheless, it is a good proxy for such devices that will come in the future. 

Lenovo rollable PCs charting a new path for laptops (Analyst Angle) 5

The display of this laptop, which extends and shrinks with the press of a button, seems like sheer magic. It turns out it has many practical use cases too. At the very outset, it would be ideal for anybody working with long-format content. At the top of the list are content creators, as well as folks who deal with long documents, such as legal and financial professionals, contract personnel, software/ web developers, and the like. 

In today’s mobile age, content, especially visuals and videos (e.g., Instagram), is optimized for smartphone screens, i.e., for portrait mode. Usually, content creators use desktop PCs or laptops with vertically mounted external displays for editing and managing such content. This laptop would be ideal for them. Even for consumers, watching such content on a large vertical display would maximize screen real estate rather than fitting it on a horizontal screen with a lot of unused space. Since social media is optimized for scrolling, a long vertical display is almost a match made in heaven. 

For folks who read, write, review, and debug long-form documents, a vertical extended display means fewer page-ups/downs and back-and-forth, which directly translates into improved productivity. Considering that the enterprise personnel who handle such content are usually highly paid (e.g., lawyers, financial analysts, software developers), even small productivity gains might yield significant cost and time savings.

Personally, I am a big user of X (Twitter) and LinkedIn, both of which are optimized for vertical content. Hence, I found this laptop extremely useful. I live-tweet/post from events, during which, in addition to sharing my own opinions, I have to monitor social media trends and what others post continuously. In such a case, this display is a lifesaver, as I can review a large chunk of content with a quick glance without scrolling. As an analyst, I also read a lot of documents and reports and review long spreadsheets, etc. For all of this, I found out firsthand that the productivity improvements are real. 

There are two things you should consider before buying this or any such rollable product. First, its price!  Being the first such laptops on the market, they will be priced as a premium offering (this rollable retailed at $3499). That means it is well-suited only for those who can realize productivity gains and achieve reasonable RoI. Second, it’s weight. Because of the larger display and rolling mechanism, such laptops will be slightly heavier. That means your utility of the larger screen has to be enough to justify lugging the extra weight all the time. 

Since rollable displays are flexible OLED displays, not traditional glass screens, you also need to ensure the display quality meets your needs, especially if you are a graphics artist, etc. Also, they have moving parts, and the rolling mechanism is still in its early stages; you have to be cognizant of the working environment, such as the effects of dust, moisture, etc. 

Just to be sure, during my limited use, I did not encounter any of these issues, and the user experience was very similar to that of traditional laptops, of course, with the added benefits of the large display. Lenovo rates the rolling mechanism for 20,000 rolling cycles, which cover most, if not all, use cases. I also got good battery life (almost a full day), even with extended, fully rolled-out display time. 

Bottom line, if you are one of the target users and personas identified above, and can afford the price tag, buying these laptops is a wise choice.

Even more exciting rollable concepts coming soon

As mentioned, Lenovo is working on a broad portfolio of rollable concept devices, most of which were shown during its own and industry events.  

The first one is ThinkPad Rollable XD, an evolution of the Gen 6 rollable, and likely its replacement.  In this, the additional screen, when not in use, instead of stowed away, wraps around and works as a secondary display. This can enable many interesting use cases that increase productivity. For example, to share the screen with somebody in front of you, say for translation and other interactions, for customer service terminals, etc. Also, when the laptop is closed, the external display can be used for notifications, quick lookups, etc., minimizing the need to open the laptop and fire up the whole screen, mimicking the way foldable phones work. This will also increase battery life.

Lenovo rollable PCs charting a new path for laptops (Analyst Angle) 6

The most exciting concept was the Legion Pro Rollable gaming PC, which expands laterally to turn a standard 15-inch display into a 24-inch-wide screen. This would be an instant hit if priced right. Also, the increased weight of rollable laptops would be negligible compared to the usually heavy gaming laptops.

Lenovo rollable PCs charting a new path for laptops (Analyst Angle) 7

Going back to the notion of mimicking the smartphone experience on laptops, the Vertiflex brings it even further without a rollable display. It allows the display to rotate 90 degrees and switch between landscape and portrait modes. This is done manually, requiring a simple hinge mechanism without the extra weight or complexity of the rollable display.

Lenovo rollable PCs charting a new path for laptops (Analyst Angle) 8

I am sure this is only the beginning of these new form factors. The rollable concept allows designers to go wild and experiment like never before. And with Lenovo’s proven track record of quickly commercializing them, foldables are charting a new path for laptops, and users are in for an exciting journey. 

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Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

• In wireless communications, multiple antennas typically results in improved performance

• Fitting more antennas within the constraints of a smartphone and managing them is a major challenge

• A new feature called 6Rx will allow up to six antennas per phone

In wireless communications, the use of multiple antennas typically results in improved performance. However, fitting more antennas within the constraints of a smartphone and managing them is a major challenge. That’s why today’s smartphones typically have only two or four antennas. But a new feature called 6Rx will allow up to six antennas per phone. Additionally, the on-device AI intelligently manages these antennas to maximize performance and optimize power consumption and battery life. The cellular modem supporting these features was introduced last year, followed by the announcement of a smartphone this year.

The primary benefit of 6Rx is a significant improvement in downlink cell-edge speeds and user experience. This effectively closes the 5G coverage gap (compared to 4G) created by the mid-band spectrum utilized by most operators. Additionally, 6Rx enhances overall capacity and uplink performance. Moreover, this feature doesn’t require any standards changes or upgrades to the network infrastructure, making it a cost-effective and fast time-to-market feature for 5G operators.

5G performance needs

The rapid proliferation of 5G, the popularity of true unlimited data plans, and the unprecedented growth of fixed wireless access (FWA) are quickly depleting the available capacity in today’s 5G networks. Operators are seeking cost-effective ways to enhance the capacity and performance of their existing networks without requiring significant infrastructure investments.

Most operators utilize midband spectrum (e.g., 3.5 GHz) for 5G. However, the underlying networks are built on 1800 NHz, 1900 MHz, or 2.1 GHz 4G site grids. Since higher frequencies have a smaller coverage footprint, this difference in frequency between 4G and 5G creates coverage gaps. Much of these gaps are addressed by 5G’s massive MIMO, which can support up to 64 antennas on base stations (64T64R). However, massive MIMO may not be beneficial in improving performance at the edges of cells, in hard-to-reach areas such as indoors, basements, and urban jungles. Weak signal is one of the consistent customer complaints of 5G. The current solutions, such as small cells and network densification, are very expensive and time-consuming.

In such a condition, 6Rx is an ideal solution to this challenge that 5G operators are facing today.

What is 6Rx?

As the name suggests, this feature utilizes six receive antennas, instead of the typical four, in 5G devices. More antennas mean better diversity gain and coverage. But keeping all antennas active all the time significantly increases power consumption and reduces battery life. Therefore, the smart approach is to use only as many as needed to maximize coverage, neither more nor less.

You might ask, “What is the big deal here? FWA CPEs have as high as 8Rx configuration!” The primary difference lies in the constrained space and battery life requirements of smartphones. Each of these antennas will have a complete receive chain, comprising of low-noise amplifiers (LNA), filters, mixers, analog-to-digital converters (ADC), and digital signal processors (DSPs). Fitting all of them for all antennas into a small smartphone form factor with sufficient isolation and diversity gain is a Herculean effort. It requires deep technology expertise and experience.

Managing these antennas is another major hurdle. RF conditions change extremely rapidly. The decision of how many and which antennas to use must be made in almost real-time. That’s exactly where on-device AI comes into play. AI algorithms determine how many and which antennas to use, based on the type of traffic (best effort or latency-sensitive), spectrum, signal conditions, near-end obstructions (e.g., hand or head blocking), antenna performance, and other relevant parameters.

Qualcomm was first introduced to 6Rx in its Snapdragon X80 5G modem in 2024. Following that, the company announced its second-generation solution, Snapdragon X85 5G, during MWC Barcelona 2025, which further enhances performance. Xiaomi was the first Smartphone OEM to adopt 6Rx, and many others are keenly interested in it.

Since 6Rx is a proprietary technology that does not require standards or changes to the network, vendors have the full flexibility to optimize their designs and AI algorithms, offering highly differentiated solutions.

Performance improvements with 6Rx

The user’s perception of network coverage and experience is often determined by the performance at the cell edges. Studies have shown that 6Rx can increase the cell-edge data rates by 20% or more. For users, that means being able to make voice calls where it was previously impossible, enjoying stutter-free video streaming, a more immersive gaming experience, and improved performance of lower-latency applications.

Additionally, 6Rx can increase the overall network capacity by up to 20%. This is because more antennas enable smartphones to achieve better signal quality and minimize interference. Both will increase overall user data rates and, thereby, the network capacity.

Qualcomm’s field tests, utilizing smartphones with their latest X85 5G modem, have shown that overall user speeds can be as high as 35%. Currently, Qualcomm is the only provider that supports this feature in 5G modems.

Qualcomm field testing (Source: Qualcomm)

Interestingly, these six antennas can also improve uplink performance. Although the uplink diversity remains 2x, it can utilize the best two antennas of the available six antennas, which will significantly improve user data speeds and latency. Again, AI can determine which of the two antennas to use, when for the best performance. Higher uplink performance is becoming crucial with the increasing popularity of social media apps. For example, during Super Bowl LIX 2025, Verizon experienced, for the first time, that the uplink traffic exceeded the downlink traffic at the sites covering the stadium. In such cases, six antennas can be extremely helpful.

What about Apple?

The feature is starting to gain commercial traction, led by the leading Chinese vendor, Xiaomi. While other OEMs are also considering the feature, one question in everybody’s mind is “What about Apple?” There is currently no public information available on the type/make/model of the modems that will be used for the latest iPhone 17 series, except for the iPhone Air, which will utilize its own C1X. There are rumors that all other models will use Qualcomm’s modems.

I am highly doubtful that iPhone 17s will have 6Rx (specs on Apple’s site don’t list it). There are many reasons for my doubt. Firstly, Apple’s C1X is still far behind contemporary modems from Qualcomm and MediaTek in terms of features. Even basic features, such as mmWave, are missing. So, doubt such advanced features are its priority now. Secondly, historically, Apple has always used the previous year’s/generation’s modem in its latest phones, and has been a laggard in adopting new wireless technologies. Thirdly, and most importantly, from a business perspective, it would be unwise for Apple to create too much of a performance gap between third-party and its own modems.

It’s a no-brainer

For anyone familiar with wireless technology, it is a no-brainer that more antennas mean better performance. The new 6Rx feature allows up to antennas in 5G smartphones, overcoming the space and power consumption constraints. Utilization of AI takes the 6Rx performance even further. This feature doesn’t require any changes to the network and can cost-effectively address two of the crucial challenges of operators—better cell-edge experience and higher overall network capacity. The feature is already commercially available, with smartphones featuring the feature starting to be rolled out.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

If managed well, the Z Fold7 has the potential to propel this device category from today’s niche to mainstream

The tagline of Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 is “Galaxy S25 Ultra Unfolds.” I found that to be true during my last almost a month of rigorous use, after getting it on the day of the announcement. In many aspects, it is even better, because of its obvious large 8-inch display and lighter weight, but also for better grip and single-handed usage — no wonder it is seeing unprecedented traction, as reported by Samsung.

In my view, Z Fold7 is a “no-compromise” foldable tablet-phone, phablet, hybrid, or whatever you want to call it. It indeed is the ultimate productivity device. The only remaining hurdle is its hefty price tag. If managed well, the Z Fold7 has the potential to propel this device category from today’s niche to mainstream. 

Check out our analysis of Samsung Unpackedhere and reviews of the Galaxy S25 Ultra and other devices.

Z Fold7 — “No-compromise” Ultra-like foldable experience

I have been using foldables since the Z Fold4, which, in my view, was the first mainstream-class device. So far, Z Fold users have had to make compromises, be it size, shape, weight, battery life, camera performance, or something else. But Z Fold7, for the first time, eliminates the tradeoff and allows users to have both the Ultra-like flagship smartphone experience and the convenience of a tablet.

Z Fold7 is comparable to Galaxy S25 Ultra in thickness (0.35 inch, folded and 0.17 inch unfolded vs. 0.32 inch), weight (7.6 Oz vs. 7.7 Oz), camera system (200 MP sensor), performance (powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Samsung, SoC), full suite of Galaxy AI features, and more. In essence, when folded, it looks, feels, and works like a flagship phone.

Apart from the expansive 8-inch display, many things are even better than the S25 Ultra. For starters, it is lighter and fits much better, with a firmer grip when held in one hand. Since the camera bump is slightly thicker, I was thinking it might be top-heavy and prone to slipping and falling. But that is not the case. Its slightly smaller size seems perfect. I would say it will offer a much better single-handed grip for most users with average-sized hands.

Z Fold7 is beyond comparison against its predecessor, Z Fold6. It is markedly better in every respect. The improvement in thickness and weight is obvious. However, what is not that obvious is the wider width, when folded. Z Fold6 was narrow; it was very inconvenient to type, making people unfold it even for simpler tasks like texting. But Z Fold7 feels like a regular phone when typing, avoiding those unnecessary unfolds. Less unfolding means less power consumption and longer battery life.

My pet peeve with modern phones continues with the Z Fold7. The phone’s exterior body is very smooth and very slippery. The chances of dropping it, especially when trying to unfold are very high. I highly recommend using one of those sleek cases to protect this expensive device.

The phone has excellent performance and battery life, thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, SoC. I found the battery life of the Z Fold7 to be far better than that of the ZFold 6. I get a full day of battery life even for my intense productivity use case. Key to the longer battery life of any foldable is the balance between the use of the outer and folding displays. For typical smartphone uses, like emails, texting, and others, I use the outer display and only unfold when the large screen adds value. I am not a big gamer; hence, I don’t have opinions on the subject. But with the same SoC as S25 Ultra, the performance should be similar. The larger screen substantially improves the gaming experience but might also affect the battery life.  

There are a few shortcomings compared to S25 Ultra as well. First, the telephoto camera is only 10MP and space zoom is limited to 30x, compared to 50MP and 100x of S25 Ultra. This made no difference to my productivity use case. Surprisingly, Z Fold7 has a smaller battery (4,400 mAh vs. 5,000 mAh). That meant I had to charge this phone every day, compared to every other day of S25 Ultra.

Highly functional tablet

When unfolded, Z Fold7 is a delightful tablet. It is impossible to comprehend how thin it really is. You have to actually see it to believe it. Even with that thinness, it feels sturdy and solid. Some people complained about it bending around the hinge. But mine has remained straight as an arrow.

The split keyboard is my favorite. It’s such a joy typing on it. The larger display is the best for consuming any long-form content, from reading documents, long emails, long texts, to reviewing presentations, spreadsheets, browsing websites, watching videos, and more. It is ideally suited for typing long emails, texts, etc., as well as for editing content. You will see the real value of Z Fold7 when using multiple windows. You can arrange them in a few ways, resize them, and make them pop up, all through simple swipes. I think Samsung can further enhance this multi-window usability through context-based management and AI. For example, if I am writing an email and mention attachments, it’s logical that I might use the Gallery or the File manager to check out the photo or document to attach, so, bring those windows up. The on-device AI can learn my usage pattern and fine-tune this further.

There are many Galaxy AI features that are tuned for tablet display. Gemini Live is now multimodal and understands the context, including what you are watching and doing. For example, if you share your screen with Gemini Live in real-time, it can analyze the screen and help answer questions and even take actions across Samsung and Google apps. Generative Edit is adapted for the large screen, and it can even suggest what to erase. Audio Eraser works like magic, automatically detecting and removing background noise like traffic and wind noises, and unwanted disturbances from video and audio recordings. It can be used directly from the Gallery and on audio recordings in other apps like Samsung Notes, Voice Recorder, and phone-recorded voice calls.

In the early days of tablet introduction, I tried to adopt it into my usage pattern. I tried to juggle with my phone, laptop, and tablet, but it quickly became unmanageable, and I settled for a phone + laptop combination. Unfortunately, that means that, for anything that the phone can’t handle (e.g., long-form content), I had to fire up my laptop, which was a significant inconvenience. Most of the time, I would postpone those things and often forget. But not the case anymore.  Z Fold7 has significantly reduced my laptop usage. This is even more true when I am on the go. When travelling, I usually only open my laptop at the end of the day; I manage to get by during the day just with the Z Fold7. Many executives and enterprise users will realize this very quickly when they start using Z Fold7. The secondary effect of using Z Fold7 is that the battery life of your laptop has been significantly extended.

What is needed to make Z Fold7 mainstream

Z Fold7 truly offers a tremendous opportunity for Samsung to transform this foldable category into mainstream, especially for productivity use cases and in the enterprise market. There is just one hurdle to overcome — the hefty price tag. Samsung should also consider adopting some unconventional tactics to promote this device to this target market.  

The retail price of $2,000, notwithstanding Z Fold7’s exceptional value, is still very steep. Samsung is trying to lower the effective price for consumers through attractive trade-ins and other offers. However, I think the enterprise market will ultimately decide the success of the Z Fold7. Samsung should focus on both the supply and demand sides of this market.

From the supply side, work with the carriers to offer attractive volume/corporate discounts, long-term contracts, and other incentives to lower the total cost of ownership (TCO). From the demand side, do not treat this as another phone and only work through carriers. But also work directly with the enterprises. For example, target specific verticals, such as medical, retail, financial, and particular personas within large and medium-sized enterprises, such as sales personnel, road warriors, executives, healthcare and finance professionals, etc., who are always on the move and need large screens for their work. Samsung should develop typical use cases for these people, study and publish case studies to position Z Fold7 as an ultimate productivity tool and showcase the productivity gains and other tangible benefits. These would be immensely beneficial in influencing IT managers, CIOs, CFOs, and decision makers within enterprises.

Although Android OS, One UI 8, and many Google and Samsung apps are optimized for the tablet form factor, there is still a dearth of apps. Most apps simply don’t effectively utilize the larger display. Both companies, along with other OEMs, should work together to encourage and incentivize developers and create an ecosystem to not only optimize the existing apps but also develop new experiences tailored for foldables. The rumored entry of Apple into the foldables might give a bigger impetus to this effort.

In closing

After pioneering the foldable category, Samsung ultimately has a foldable tablet-phone that is ready for the mass market, especially in the productivity and enterprise domains. Z Fold7 is a no-compromise foldable rivaling any flagship smartphone in the market today, except for the price tag. A conscious all-around effort is needed to transition this category into the mainstream.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

I have been using Samsung’s category-defining Galaxy S25 Edge for the last three weeks and loving it. My biggest realization during that time is that liking this phone comes down to a simple question: “Do you know what you want?” 

If you are looking for an ultra-thin, unbelievably light, high-performance smartphone with a full-day battery life and the latest AI experiences for typical productivity use, then the Galaxy S25 Edge is a perfect fit for you. However, if you’re an enthusiast who enjoys experimenting with the camera beyond simple point-and-shoot, or a power user seeking extreme battery life, then I suggest you try the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Check out our reviews of the Galaxy S25 Ultra and other devices here

Knowing what you want is key

The Galaxy S25 Edge was announced with great fanfare during this year’s first Galaxy Unpacked event in January 2025. It was officially launched on May 13 and started shipping on May 30, 2025. No question, it started the Ultra-Thin phone trend, which even Apple is rumored to follow soon. Chinese OEMs are already on this path. Since then, numerous reviews of the phone have been published and I have spoken with many owners as well. The feedback is generally good. When it’s not, it’s most likely a case of wrong or unreasonable expectations. We often forget – if you plant an orange tree, you get oranges, not mangoes!

Slimness for the eyes, lightness for the soul

My expression when I picked up the Galaxy S25 Edge for the first time was “Whoa! It’s incredibly light,” far exceeding my expectations. Unsurprisingly, that was also the reaction of many of my friends when they held my S25 Edge for the first time. Most are impressed by its thinness, but are blown away by the lightness. Someone actually asked me whether it is a real working phone!

The thinness serves not only for an attractive look but also has a lot of utility. It fits perfectly in any of my pockets, whether it’s a shirt or jeans, without protruding. The former is more popular in India & other Asian regions. The perfect fit reduces the risk of the phone falling out of your pocket and allows you to sit comfortably, even when it’s in the back pocket. The titanium frame makes it sturdy enough so that it doesn’t bend in your back pocket. The “Bendgate” of the iPhone 6 is still fresh in people’s minds. What is impressive is that the Galaxy S25 Edge offers all of this with a screen size comparable to that of the S25 Ultra (6.7 in vs 6.9 in).

I think more important than its thinness is its lightness, as putting a thick case would nullify the charm of the former. Lower weight, on the other hand, is very addictive and universally useful. For starters, the biggest complaint with today’s large and heavy phones is the difficulty in holding, because the phone’s center of gravity is toward the top. This makes phones unstable and prone to being dropped when held in one hand. Also, operating with one hand puts a lot of weight on the pinky. Galaxy S25Edge solves all these problems.

Even with a 6.7-inch display, it has a very comfortable single-handed hold. Folks with smaller hands will love this phone. Since you don’t have to hold the phone tightly, the maneuverability of your thumb is very high, especially compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Since S25 Edge has a slightly bulged camera protrusion, I was worried that it might make it top-heavy and unstable. But I didn’t feel that at all. However, I will once again bring up my pet peeve here—the phone’s body is very slippery. I don’t know why Samsung doesn’t make the sides with a textured finish. That would make it grip even better and the fear of dropping that much lower.

Battery and camera — Perfect for regular user, not for the power user

Phone design is a complex tradeoff between the battery size, battery life, sustained processor performance (and its heat dissipation), various functions, physical size, and most importantly, cost. It’s all physics and there is no free lunch. To achieve this phenomenal thinness and lightness, Samsung has made numerous optimizations and trade-offs. The question is whether those are reasonable for the target users.

In my experience, the battery life is adequate for a regular productivity user profile, which typically might include checking emails and updates throughout the day, a couple of video conferences (Teams/Zoom), five to ten short to medium voice calls, some web browsing and video consumption, as well as taking and sharing a few pictures. On most of my regular days, I had more than 10% battery still remaining at the end of the day. However, on busy days, when I was on travel, working primarily from my phone (no laptop), continuously using cellular connectivity, taking a lot of pictures, live tweeting, etc., ending up with a dead battery was a real worry. I had to charge at least once midday or at the end of the day.

So, the decision comes down to how many such “power user” days do you have in a week or a month and whether you are willing to trade the thinness and lightness for the inconvenience of charging and perhaps the anxiety of running out of juice.

Now, coming to the camera, the Galaxy S25 Edge takes beautiful pictures. It has the same 200MP sensor as in the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It has an inferior ultrawide lens (12 MP vs. 50 MP) and lacks the 3x and 5x telephoto lenses. You will most likely not notice a significant difference between S25 Edge and Ultra pictures during everyday use, such as taking family photos, portraits or selfies. However, you will see the difference, again, when you move toward the “power user” category. Last weekend, I was at my son’s amateur rocket launch event. Most of the pictures came out great. However, the zoomed shots of the rocket far up in the sky, as well as those taken in the evening with low light, were slightly grainy. Additionally, the S25 Edge takes longer to focus when taking close-ups. So, there is some trade-off and you have to decide whether that makes sense for you.

Evolution of the ultra-thin phone category

The Galaxy S25 Edge is launching a new device category, expanding the smartphone portfolio, which now ranges from ultra-thin and ultra-light to extra-large display foldables, to an extreme performance line-up. Most major OEMs have or are planning to have all these categories. It is encouraging that, if rumors are true, Apple will also soon have an ultra-thin iPhone Air and a foldable. Therefore, I am confident that the ultra-thin category will continue to evolve and remain a long-standing presence. At some point, it might replace and become the standard flagship offering (e.g., Galaxy S-series for Samsung).

There will be significant similarity and reuse of technology among all three, i.e., ultra-thin and ultra-light, foldable and performance. The overlap between ultra-thin and foldables will be even greater. Any technology that makes phones thinner and lighter will be highly relevant for foldables. As evident, there is a lot of commonality between S25 Edge and the newly announced ultra-thin and ultra-light foldable, Galaxy ZFold 7. I am currently testing that phone and look forward to sharing my review here very soon.

To further enhance its appeal, Samsung is also offering incredible discounts and trade-in deals. In summary, Galaxy S25 Edge is a perfect choice for you if you know what you want and understand the tradeoffs you are making. It is a good reminder that your best phone isn’t always the one that has the most of everything, but the one you enjoy using every day.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Samsung Mobile held its second Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event of this year in Brooklyn, New York, on July 19^th. As expected, the extravaganza event saw the announcement of its latest foldables and watches. I was among the select analysts invited to attend the event in person.

The star of the show was Galaxy ZFold 7, the ultra-thin, ultra-light folding phone/tablet hybrid. As evident, it is the 7^th generation and has the most significant leap in improvements across the board—size, weight, camera, construction, and more. Along with that, Samsung also announced the Galaxy ZFlip 7, Galaxy ZFlip 7 FE, and Galaxy Watch 8 series. All devices are now ready for pre-order and will start shipping from July 25th, 2025.

You can find detailed specifications of each of the devices here:  Galaxy ZFold 7, Galaxy ZFlip 7, Galaxy ZFlip 7 FE, Galaxy Watch 8 Series.

The launch event was preceded by an in-depth NDA analyst briefing with Samsung product managers and executives, and a hands-on experience session was held after the event, open to all attendees. During the hands-on session, numerous devices were available for exploration, and experts were on hand to answer any questions. I received one of the Z Fold 7 review units and am currently testing it. Be on the lookout for my review here.

Tantra’s take:

Galaxy ZFold 7:

Samsung foldables have come of age. After pioneering the concept, Samsung has brought continuous improvements and enhancements in terms of performance, reliability, and features to foldables. The latest Galaxy Z Fold 7 is their best yet, representing a significant leap in evolution, especially in terms of thinness, weight, and camera quality.

This phone has addressed most of the pain points of a foldable smartphone/tablet hybrid, including bulkiness, heaviness, fragility, difficulty in typing when folded, inferior camera, and others. Its ultra-thinness and ultra-light weight make it look and feel like a regular smartphone. Samsung has rightly dubbed this device the “unfolded Galaxy S25 Ultra,” the company’s latest flagship smartphone.  And that is true in many respects:

• Similar thickness when folded (0.35 in vs. 0.32 in)

• Lighter weight (7.58 oz vs. 7.69 oz)

• Comparable outer display (6.7 vs. 6.9 in)

• Similar camera (200MP sensor)

• Same performance (Qualcomm Snapdragon8Elite SoC)

Now, choosing foldable is no longer a tradeoff. It represents the best of both – a smartphone and a tablet – and is the ultimate productivity device.

The biggest remaining pain point is the price. All the attractive deals and trade-ins that Cellular Service Providers (CSPs) and Samsung are offering should ease the pain a little bit, but a $1,899 retail price is still a steep hill to climb for consumers.

However, for the enterprise market, the price hurdle can be effectively addressed through corporate volume discounts, bundling, and long-term service commitments. Here, a close relationship with CSPs and Samsung would be very crucial. Some might ask, “How is this different from previous Folds?”. Well, everybody likes a larger display. However, until now, many enterprise users have not been willing to make the trade-off of a foldable. But ZFold 7 changes all that.

My advice to Samsung is to seize the opportunity, position this as the ultimate productivity device, and sell it hard to enterprises, directly and through CSPs. They should target specific personas within enterprises, showcase use cases, and conduct case studies to highlight the tangible productivity gains that can be achieved. Some of the early target personas could be executives on the move who need instant access to dashboards, records, documents, and other data. For example, senior executives, sales executives, shop floor, retail floor managers, and others. They should also collaborate with the app developer community to not only optimize existing apps but also develop new ones for dual/foldable displays, much like how Apple has iPad-optimized apps.

Wide adoption in enterprises is crucial for the ZFold product line to become mainstream; otherwise, it will continue to be a niche, premium device.  

Galaxy ZFlip 7 and Galaxy Watch 8:

The biggest attraction of the ZFlip7 compared to its predecessor is the large outer display with almost zero bezel, as well as its integration with Galaxy AI. The key to making foldable devices attractive is to allow most activities to be performed on this display, thereby minimizing the need to unfold the phone. This not only enhances user experience and stickiness, but more importantly, significantly improves battery life.  Galaxy AI’s ability to run from the outer display and many other features achieves precisely that.

The biggest surprise in ZFlip 7 is the choice of SoC. Bucking the trend, Samsung is using its own Exynos 2500 in all the regions. This marks the first time in many years that an Exynos-powered premium smartphone has entered the US market. It will be interesting to see how customers react to the performance and the absence of a traditional Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC.

If played well, foldable phones have the potential to replace today’s flagship phones, but OEMs must ensure that users don’t have to compromise on reliability, display quality, camera, and other features, as well as price. This would be similar to how large display “phablets” started as a niche but quickly became mainstream smartphones.

Galaxy Watch 8 series introduces some interesting new features and enhancements, but most are incremental. The most notable feature is the return of the beloved rotating bezel on the Classic version. The new Vascular Load and Antioxidant Index measurements further increase the healthcare appeal of the watch. The watch body is now thinner and lighter.

Galaxy ZFlip7 FE:

This is the first Fan Edition (FE) of any foldable that Samsung has ever launched. FEs are cost-optimized versions of S-series devices. I think the launch of the Galaxy ZFlip 7 FE is significant for several reasons.  The straightforward reason is that foldables have been around for years now and have become so robust; expanding them into multiple tiers makes sense. The interesting reason, however, is competitive pressure. Motorola Mobility, which is seeing a resurgence after being bought by Lenovo. It has introduced truly inspiring foldables under its Razr brand. Although Motorola primarily serves the prepaid market in the US, where Samsung is less prominent, these Razr phones, especially the Razr Ultra, could pose a challenge to Samsung in international markets.

Samsung is taking a smart approach by anticipating this challenge and releasing a cost-optimized model early to address the market. Samsung is achieving the lower cost by using last year’s design and last year’s SoC—its own Exynos 2400. Interestingly, ZFlip 7 FE’s direct competitor, the Razr Ultra, utilizes top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC. It is worthwhile keeping an eye on this competition.

In summary, this Galaxy Unpacked event marked a major milestone in Samsung’s foldable journey. It will be interesting to see how the market reacts to all the new devices announced.

Artificial intelligence was a dominant theme at this year’s Mobile World Congress, the show that foretells the industry’s future direction. The most exciting use of AI in mobile networks is for vRAN. Since AI requires high-caliber computing and radio networks require near-real-time, low-latency processing, in the future, there will be an intense focus on the processors used in vRAN infrastructure products.

Among the top global infra vendors, when it comes to vRAN acceleration, Ericsson has historically been firmly in the Intel/x86-based CPU camp, and Nokia in the Arm ASICs camp. However, unlike its peers, Samsung Networks has been offered both solutions, giving operators a greater choice.

The introduction of AI and the increasing role of GPUs make these options even broader and more diverse. Ultimately, the major vendors have to provide solutions to most of these options, if not all, to cater to operators’ needs. In such a scenario, Samsung has already gotten a head start and is leading the race now, and is also actively collaborating with ecosystem partners on upcoming solutions.

Diverse vRAN configurations and processor architectures

Intel has pioneered and owns a majority share of the vRAN processor market. Its Xeon scalable processors power most global vRAN/Open RAN deployments today. With the evolution of its CPU cores, Intel has been offering increasingly higher vRAN performance and features, the latest being the sixth-generation Xeon (Granite Rapids-D). Intel has chosen the “lookaside” configuration with a built-in vBoost accelerator. 

However, as 5G networks and technology evolved, especially with higher-order MIMO such as 64T64R, many vendors proposed specialized ASIC-based accelerators working in an “in-line” configuration, instead of Intel’s general-purpose processors. Qualcomm and Marvell are the primary vendors supplying these ASICs, viz. Qualcomm Dragonwing X100 Accelerator and Marvell Octeon series. Both use the Arm microarchitecture. The commercial deployment of these Arm-based solutions is still in its infancy, but is starting to ramp up. 

Cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AI giant Nvidia have recently entered the vRAN market. AWS supports vRAN accelerators on its Arm-based Graviton processors (ASICs) instances, and Nvidia has developed its GPU-based AX800 accelerator. Both these accelerators are yet to be commercially deployed.

Nvidia’s AI-RAN effort is the latest sensation in the mobile industry. It has been gaining considerable industry attention, with many operators and vendors collaborating. Most of these are still in the proof-of-concept and early trial stages.

With AI poised to play a significant role in different aspects of mobile networks, including RAN, deciding what kind of processors and architectures will be used for what applications and use cases has become a major industry discussion topic: Is it general-purpose CPUs, ASICs, or GPUs, whether x86, Arm, or something else?

vRAN/Open RAN infrastructure vendor landscape

As vendors started developing vRAN /Open RAN systems, they adopted one or the other processors and architecture to optimize their R&D investments. For example, Ericsson opted for Intel’s Xeon CPUs with “lookaside” configuration. They even forcefully defended this approach through detailed analysis and whitepapers. Since Intel was the pioneer and offered a software reference design called FlexRAN based on its processors, it was easy for many early vRAN players, including Samsung, Ericsson, Mavenir, Rakuten and others, to adopt it.

On the other side, another major infra provider, Nokia, espoused Arm ASICs-based “inline” configuration, working closely with Marvell. Other vRAN players like Fujitsu and NEC have adopted Qualcomm’s in-line Arm solution. Recently, Mavenir, Rakuten and Viettel have announced support for Qualcomm’s solution as well. Nokia, Marvell and Qualcomm have also presented their own analysis and reports claiming the benefits of the dedicated inline accelerator.

Because of Nvidia’s outsized influence in the AI domain, almost all vendors are either already collaborating with it or planning to collaborate on GPU-based vRAN accelerators and AI-RAN efforts.

In my opinion, because of the diversity of global operators, no matter where they have started, major vendors have to support most of these processors and configuration options.

Samsung embraced processor diversity early, setting the trend for the industry

Realizing the importance of choice, vRAN leader Samsung has embraced all the options: Intel, AMD, Arm and Nvidia, early on, offering choice to operators.

As mentioned, adopting Intel was a natural decision because of the early availability. Samsung has supported successive generations of Intel Xeon processors, including the latest sixth-generation, on which it claimed the industry’s first vRAN call in 2024. It even showed its multi-cell vRAN testing with sixth-generation Xeon at MWC 2025. Because of Intel’s dominant vRAN market share, most of Samsung’s vRAN deployments are also Intel-based. Samsung has also offered ARM-based lookaside accelerators. Although not publicly known, it seems to use Marvell Technology’s ASICs.

Keeping the spirit of diversity, Samsung started collaborating with AMD very early. It successfully completed the industry’s first end-to-end call with AMD EPYC 8004 (aka Siena) processor in 2024 and multi-cell testing using both the Siena as well as the latest generation (Turin) processor in early 2025. Further, Samsung was the first to make a data call on AWS Graviton instances in 2024. More importantly, it demonstrated AI-RAN proof-of-concept with NVIDIA in its research lab later in the year.

To support this multitude of processor platforms, Samsung has developed a highly versatile and flexible vRAN software platform that can be easily ported to all processors and architectures. As industry moves toward this diverse processor landscape, Samsung has gotten an early start in the processor race and a formidable edge against competitors. It will be interesting to see how the company can leverage this edge to win the marketplace.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Many readers of EE Times will very likely be familiar with the ongoing legal tussle between Arm and Qualcomm, which had its day in court last December, with Qualcomm coming out on top. Since the trial, there have been many significant developments in that case. Additionally, Qualcomm has filed a new, related (but separate) case against Arm.

Next steps for the current trial

In the December trial (see daily blogs on the court trial here), held in a Delaware court, the jury decided in favor of Qualcomm in two of the three questions, which cleared the company of breach of the Nuvia Architecture License Agreement (ALA) and allowed the company to sell products with Nuvia technology through its own ALA. But the jury was deadlocked on one question: “Did Nuvia breach its ALA with Arm?” The parties and the judge continue to discuss how to move forward.

Arm has publicly said that it will ask to declare this a “mistrial” and request a full retrial. Being in court during the trial and watching Judge Maryellen Noreika’s reactions to the case, I doubt whether she will entertain a full retrial request. She has even ordered mandatory mediation between the parties before seeing them back in court. Arm also has the option to appeal the judgment.

This trial’s discovery and witness testimony have become a treasure trove of information in many aspects. Referring to some of the statements from Arm witnesses, Qualcomm claims that Arm did not comply with the ALA requirement of safeguarding Nuvia’s confidential information, even using that in its products. The testimony from a couple of Arm employees indicated that they did not get any instructions to destroy Nuvia’s confidential information after Arm unilaterally canceled the license.

In fact, there was evidence that Arm engineers ran a digital comparison of Nuvia’s confidential configuration file against a configuration file provided by Qualcomm for one of Qualcomm’s custom CPUs, in direct breach of ALA provisions. Additionally, Arm is said to have incorporated certain Nuvia-suggested confidential improvements to its coherent mesh network feature.    

Further, under a legal doctrine called “unclean hands,” Qualcomm claims that since Arm itself did not comply with the ALA confidentiality requirements, it does not have a basis to claim that Nuvia breached the same contract by not destroying Arm’s confidential information. This motion was filed on Jan. 29, 2025, and the trial should be coming up in 2026.

I believe this “unclean hands” claim significantly weakens Arm’s argument, specifically regarding the undecided question and even the full retrial or the appeal.

Fallout of CEO testimony and leaked plans of making own chips

During the court testimony, Qualcomm’s lawyer asked Arm CEO Rene Haas quite a few questions about Arm building its own chips and whether Qualcomm is Arm’s competitor. Haas answered that Arm had thought about building chips, which was a surprise for many in the industry (including me) but denied that Arm and Qualcomm were competitors as in both companies were not building the same products to sell to the same customers. Lo and behold, within two months of that testimony, Financial Times reported that Arm is working on its own data center chip, and that social media giant Meta might be the likely first customer. More interestingly, on the same day, Reuters reported that Arm was actively hunting for chip design talent from its licensees weeks before the testimony.

This was a double whammy for the vast Arm ecosystem. First, industry leaders, especially the Arm licensees, were surprised to hear Arm’s intention to develop its own chip. Second, very shortly after its CEO categorically said they were not competitors to Qualcomm (a licensee), the news of the chip development came. Knowing the ins and outs of the semiconductor industry and how long it takes to design a chip, it is very clear that Haas knew the chip plans when he gave that testimony. I think Judge Noreika might remember it and consider it when deciding the course of the trial.

Qualcomm files a new case against Arm

After the court trial, Qualcomm filed a new case against Arm on Jan. 3, 2025, claiming that the latter is withholding deliverables required by its ALA. This was specifically for Qualcomm’s custom core designs based on Nuvia technology. Qualcomm says that since these deliverables were solely within Arm’s knowledge and control, it had no way of knowing what was withheld and for how long.

Qualcomm also claims that Arm misrepresented the facts about the earlier case to Qualcomm’s customers, creating a scenario that casts doubts on Qualcomm’s ability to deliver the products that it promised to its customers. Qualcomm also alleges that Arm sent and leaked its letter of notice of cancellation of ALA to coincide with the latter’s high-profile annual conference, Snapdragon Summit, in 2024 to inflict business harm. This cancellation notice has now been withdrawn.

In essence, Qualcomm’s new case against Arm is a combination of claims of anti-competitive practices, breach of ALA requirements and obstruction of business. The trial for this case is expected in March 2026.

Final thoughts

The legal war between the two companies continues. Although settlement is always possible, this relationship has too many dimensions and considerations, making the resolution very complex and messy. Those considerations include, from Qualcomm’s side, moving its entire portfolio to custom cores, which takes time. It is not clear whether it makes sense to design custom cores for all its product lines, especially for the mass market, cost-sensitive part of the product portfolio. What will its strategy be after 2033, when the current Arm ALA expires, and others?

From Arm’s side, unwinding many ALAs to increase its revenue and value, designing its own chips, competing against and upsetting its own licensee ecosystem, bracing for the rising RISC-V ISA, and more. There are many unknowns, too; for example, consider Arm’s rumored data center chip for Meta. Knowing that Nuvia was working on such chips and collaborated with Arm, there is a possibility of legal consequences. Suffice it to say there is much more to come in this saga.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Samsung announced its latest flagship Galaxy S25 series phones at the Unpacked event in San Jose, CA, on Jan 22nd, 2025. I was one of the lucky ones to get a Galaxy S25 Ultra to review. It is an attractive-looking phone with excellent hardware and performance, a slew of useful Agentic Gen AI features usable now, and whose utility will expand and improve over the device’s lifetime.

With extremely attractive discounts and trade-ins, performance, and AI features, the Galaxy S25 phones offer exceptional value compared to equivalent iPhones, making them a no-brainer buy.

Check out our other product reviews here

Excellent hardware and performance

First, let’s get the more straightforward part out of the way—the hardware. My views are about Galaxy S25 Ultra, but they should also apply to the other phones in the series with the same specs and features.

I like this first redesign of the Ultra line-up, especially the sharp edges and the slightly textured sides, which give a good grip. Combining that with the titanium body, which makes the phone thin and light, and the rugged Corning Gorilla Armor 2 glass display, dare I say, you could use this phone without a case. The low-glare and bright display (2,600 nits) make the phone highly usable in bright outdoors, especially when reading text.

The new 50MP ultra-wide camera is a nice touch to the Ultra line-up’s already excellent quad-camera system, whose pictures I have always admired. The enhancements to Nitography make low-light videos with moving objects less noisy. Samsung Log features make colors look more real, and the virtual aperture supported in Expert RAW mode gives more control and makes the pictures pro-like. Frankly, I am not a pro photographer. Hence, I didn’t play with them much. But all these features greatly benefit a burgeoning group of freelancing content creators and influences.

I am impressed with the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s long battery life. This is my first truly multi-day battery-life phone. So far, I have only charged it on alternate days/nights and have moved away from the nightly charging routine. We will see how long that goes.     

The phone’s excellent performance is primarily due to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy SoC. Unlike in previous years, Qualcomm has done many Samsung-exclusive hardware and software customizations to this chip (be on the lookout for my Tantra’s Mantra podcast on this). Again, unlike previous generations, the SoC utilizes Qualcomm’s custom cores based on Nuvia microarchitecture design. It boasts a 37% CPU, 30% GPU, and 40% NPU performance increase over its predecessor, which shows up in the phone’s snappy experience, long battery life, and Gen AI features.   

Galaxy AI – Real use cases now, even more and better later

After much talk about Gen AI on devices, we finally have a phone with real-life use cases that benefit most users. Galaxy AI supports Agentic Gen AI, where users interact with “Agents” instead of apps. These agents work across many apps to execute complex, multi-step functions. Adding natural language capabilities to the mix, Agentic AI has the potential to fundamentally upend smartphones’ User Interface (UI) paradigm. Galaxy S25 gives an early flavor of that.

On the back end, Galaxy AI blends Google’s Gemini cloud-based AI models with Samsung’s Personal Data Engine (PDE) device-based models. On the front end, it weaves together Gemini Live, One UI7, and Bixby to create a relatively smooth user experience, hiding all the complexity.

Let’s look at some of these key Galaxy AI features:

Gemini Live: This is the most visible and will probably be the most used Galaxy AI feature. It is activated, by default, by a “long press” of the phone’s side button. The feature works as a voice assistant for complex multi-step agentic functions I mentioned above (along with traditional internet search). I tested the feature quite a bit. Here are a few things I did: Searching my mailbox to find the email with my friend’s address in it, looking for directions and sending them to Google Maps; Sending text messages to many people on my contact list; Opening a specific page from a file in Google Docs; Opening various settings or apps on the phones and more. All this is done just with voice prompts on Gemini Live without going to any apps.

Similarly, with Gemini Live, I could interact live with YouTube videos playing on the phone or images displayed on the phone. I could ask questions about videos or pictures being displayed, create a summary of a long YouTube video without entirely watching it, even hum a tune to search for relevant videos on YouTube, etc. Gemini uses hybrid AI with a mix of cloud and device-based processing.

With Gemini Live, possibilities are endless. However, not all of them are yet possible. Its agentic interaction within Google Apps is the best. For now, it can only open other apps but not interact with them. Hopefully, that will be coming soon.

Now Bar: I call this a passive personal assistant. On the locked screen, it shows your most important, timely, and relevant updates. For example, reminders for an upcoming flight, live scores from big games, forthcoming appointments, etc., all without opening apps.

Now Briefs: These are also passive assistants; they are personalized updates and actionable insights that show up on the main screen throughout the day. They updated a few times a day for me with titles like Good Morning, Morning Brief, Good Day, Tonight’s Brief, Late Night Recap, etc.  Typically, the Morning Briefs include a snapshot of your sleep, weather forecast, top news headlines, your schedule for the day, and important reminders such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc. The Evening Briefs include a review of key activities from the day, photos you took, upcoming travel plans, a wrap-up of the day, reminders for the next day, etc. In my briefs, only a few of these elements showed up, not all of them. I assume these can become richer, more informative, and smarter as we move forward.

Both Now Bar and Now Briefs seem to run on the phone and only fetch information from outside without sending data out of the phone. Currently, you can only select the apps considered for these features, but there is no option to configure what to include, from what sources, etc. Presumably, that will be available in the future.

Photo Gallery Search: If you are like me, who takes tons of pictures, never catalogs them, and vaguely remembers what they contain, this feature is for you. It is integrated into the Samsung Gallery app and activated by voice prompt or typing. You can ask this to search for any content in Samsung Gallery. You can ask to find pictures or videos with specific people, animals, or objects, or from a particular day, event, or almost anything distinct and identifiable. The prompt also allows enough words for the search string. Since I have many pictures on the phone, I had a lot of fun running the queries. Again, the possibilities are limitless. But not all of them are available yet. I am sure that will improve as time progresses. Gallery Search also runs only on the device, with no data leaving the phone.

Since you must use the app’s search function for this, that might create some confusion with Gemini Live, which uses a long press on the side button.  

Modes and Routines: These allow you to change the phone’s settings to suit your context and automate your routines. They were supported on earlier Galaxy phones. However, because of Agentic AI capabilities, they can be significantly improved and almost become ambient actions on the Galaxy S25 series. They could also utilize other Samsung devices, sensors, wearables, and others connected through Smart Things for even better context-based action determination. I am still studying these, and they seem to have a lot of promise. I will probably write a separate article on this.

In addition to the above, there are Audio Erase and Noise Cancellation features, as well as improved versions of existing Gen AI features such as Circle to Search, Generative Edit, Drawing Assist, and others. Like previous phones, there is a master switch to restrict the processing of AI data only on the device.

In closing

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is an excellent flagship smartphone. Thanks to the customized Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, it has stellar hardware and outstanding performance. Some basic Gen AI features are easy to use now, while others might have a slight learning curve. But the beauty of Gen AI is that it can learn user behavior over time and adapt to it. Suffice it to say there is a vast scope for personalization and adaptability during the device’s lifetime.

Samsung and its carrier partners are offering very generous discounts and trade-in offers for new Galaxy S25 Series phones. Utilizing those offers, you could buy these for just a few hundred dollars, which is exceptional value. That’s why I am saying it is a no-brainer buy.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Summary of Day 5

Check out the summaries of previous days:  Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.

The final day of the trial was a slow-moving soap opera, most of the day with a nail-biting finish that brought victory to Qualcomm.

The day started slow, with the Jury resuming deliberations and remedy discussion scheduling. Around 11 am, the judge summoned the parties back into the room and informed them that the Jury was deadlocked on Question 1 (Whether Nuvia breached Nuvia ALA) and had decided on Question 2 (Whether Qualcomm breached Nuvia ALA) and Question 3 (Are Qualcomm products using Nuvia technology covered under Qualcomm ALA?)

After giving deadlock-related jury instructions, the jury was sent back with additional time. At around 1 pm, they came back without any change. At that point, the judge decided to accept the two decisions and announced the verdict:

Question 1 – No decision; Question 2 – Qualcomm won;  Question 3 – Qualcomm won

Before the decision, Arm’s lawyer tried to convince the judge not to accept the two verdicts, but none of the arguments persuaded her. Additionally, the judge put a high bar for retrial. She will order mediation and is not keen to see them back in court quickly. That makes this case a sure win for Qualcomm.

With that, Qualcomm kept its impressive streak of winning major court trials. Recently, it won against FTC, won one, and settled another case against Apple, and now against Arm (actually SoftBank, which owns 90% of Arm).

Come back for… well, today was the final day. Happy Holidays! Check out our other content on the site!

Highlights of Day 5:

• When the court opened, the judge asked both parties whether they wanted to discuss remedies today before the jury verdict or postpone it to sometime in January. Bot lawyers choose the latter

• About two hours into the day, the judge (through the clerk) asked both parties whether she should check with the jury on progress. But the Arm lawyer declined

• Around 11 am, the judge informed everyone that the jury was deadlocked on Question 1 and had decisions on Question 2 and Question 3

• The jury was summoned back to the courtroom, and the Judge gave them jury instructions related to deadlock and explained what happens if they don’t break the deadlock (retrial with a jury from the same jury pool)

• The jury was given another hour or so to see whether they could converge on Question 1

• It was pretty clear to me at that stage that Qualcomm had won on Question 2 and Question 3 because if they had not, Question 1 would have been an easy decision

• Around 1 pm, the court reconvened. The judge said nothing had changed, and she was ready to accept the decisions for Question 2 and Question 3.

• Arm’s lawyer objected to that, saying Q1 and Q2 are linked, so she should not accept the partial verdict, quoting a possible precedence (Palo Alto vs. Juniper case)

• The judge asked for details. Arm team scrambled to get some specifics, but she was unconvinced about the relevance of the cited precedence

• Arm’s lawyer suggested bringing back the jury on Monday, which the Judge summarily rejected, saying they had already spent more than 10 hours on deliberations and had decided on two questions unanimously. She added that Arm will have a chance for a retrial

• Finally, the jury was brought to the room, and the judge asked each of the jurors whether they could decide on Question 1 if more time was given. All of them said no.

• At that point, she received the verdict from the jury, and the clerk read them out

• After the jury left, the judge came back to the room and discussed the next steps

• She thought the case should have been settled instead of coming to trial

• She will not entertain a quick retrial to come to her court. Instead, she will order mediation for the companies. She even offered to recommend good mediators who have worked on complex cases. But all of that will be next year

• With that, the judge wished happy holidays for everyone and dismissed the court

Summary of Day 4

Check out the summaries of previous days:  Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.

Today was the last day of the hearing. Both parties gave their closing statements, which were primarily rehashes of their arguments so far. The presiding judge gave final jury instructions, and the jury started deliberations around noon. They will have to decide on three questions, and their verdict on each of the questions will have to be unanimous. They deliberated until the end of the day (4:30 p.m.) but didn’t converge. They will return tomorrow at 9 am. The judge might also discuss remedies tomorrow.

I am hopeful that the Jury will come up with a verdict tomorrow, or else they will have to come back on Jan 3^rd next year because of the Christmas holidays. That will be a nightmare scenario as they might have forgotten all the testimonies and other details.

Come back here tomorrow for the fifth and possibly the final day’s update.

Highlights of Day 4:

• There are three questions (really two, as 1 & 2 are similar) the jury has to answer, as I had discussed in the Day 2 blog:

  1. Whether Nuvia has breached section 15.1(a) of Nuvia ALA?

  2. Whether Qualcomm has breached section 15.1(a) of Nuvia ALA?

  3. Are Qualcomm products using Nuvia technology covered under Qualcomm ALA?

Section 15.1(a) refers to destroying Arm’s confidential information after ALA cancellation. The second question is interesting, as Qualcomm was never a party to the Nuvia ALA. However, Arm claims that since Qualcomm enjoyed the benefits of the technology developed under the Nuvia ALA, it has to be associated with that contract. The third question is Qualcomm’s counterclaim, which is to protect it from any future litigation related to Nuvia technology.

• Arm, in its closing statement, reiterated the same arguments from the last three days and tried to address some of the issues raised by Qualcomm

  • Nuvia/Qualcomm needed Arm consent for acquisition

  • Nuvia breached the confidentiality requirements of ALA by sharing it with Qualcomm

  • Qualcomm bought Nuvia because of cost savings, not performance issues

  • Arm Technology includes Architecture Compliant Core (check out Day 2 blog for details)

  • Many things Qualcomm raised are irrelevant (e.g., SoftBank/ Masayoshi Son’s influence, letters to Qualcomm customers, CEO compensation, etc.)

Arm’s presentation was more direct – this is a contract case, and here are our arguments on why we are right.

• Qualcomm’s closing statement also included a rehash of arguments presented during the course of the trial, as well as a few new things:

• • Where is the harm? Arm never claimed any harm or damage

  • It sent letters to over 40 OEMs suggesting Qualcomm had breached the Arm contract

  • Processor design, RTL code, and other Nuvia Technology were not a derivative of Arm technology

  • There was no assignment of #ALA to Qualcomm – Qualcomm ALA covers all its products (Contract states “work done by itself & others”)

  • Arm Architecture Reference Manual is a publicly available document, not confidential

  • The primary reason for Arm to bring this case is to increase revenue from Qualcomm, done at the behest of the Chair of the Board

Unlike Arm, Qualcomm’s approach was a little bit emotional, mentioning harm to the chip industry and ecosystem, etc.,

Summary of Day 3

Check out the summary of Day 1 here and Day 2 here.

Significant progress was made on the third day. At the end of the day, the case has boiled down to two questions to be decided by the jury: 1) Whether Qualcomm and/or Nuvia breached a specific section of the Nuvia ALA (15.1a), which requires Arm to prove that Qualcomm was required to destroy all products using the Nuvia technology that Qualcomm acquired; 2) Whether Qualcomm’s products are licensed under the Qualcomm ALA. The first was the decision by Arm lawyers, and the second is the confirmation asked by Qualcomm.

The day saw intense cross-examination of Qualcomm expert witness Dr. Murali Annvaram and the testimony of Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon. Arm’s lawyer tried to make Dr. Annavaram say that cores are Arm technology, which he didn’t. Cristiano explained that Arm’s lagging behind Apple in performance was the main reason for buying Nuvia, and he would be happy to get TLA from Arm if it provided high-performance cores even now.

All the testimonies are now completed. Tomorrow, both parties will make their closing statements, and jury deliberations will begin. If the Jury decides quickly, we might have a decision by tomorrow evening.

Come back here tomorrow for the fourth day’s update.

Highlights of Day 3:

• Cross-examination of Annavarm was pretty intense. There is a lot of back and forth on defining what Arm Technology is. Although there is a definition of the term in the ALA, the discussion focused on the explanation of “Confidential Information,” which seems to suggest that “Architecture Compliant Core” is an Arm derivative. Dr. Annavarm didn’t agree to that at all. This is the same thing that was the bone of contention during Gerard Williams’s testimony on Day 2

• The “Arm Technology” term has been used many, many times during the last three days. It does have a specific definition in the contract. That doesn’t include any of the work, including design, RTL, and lots of other stuff done by companies like Nuvia to design processors. This is in contrast to how it is mentioned in the definition of “Confidential Information” mentioned above. It will be interesting to see how the jury will view this.

• Qualcomm’s counsel turned Arm’s Piano analogy on its head. Arm compared its ISA to a Piano Keyboard design during the opening statement and used it throughout the trial. It claimed that no matter how big or small the Piano is, the keyboard design remains the same and is covered by its license. Qualcomm’s counsel extended that analogy to show how ridiculous it would be to say that because you designed the keyboard, you own all the pianos in the world. Suggesting that is what Arm is trying to do.

Key Points from the testimonies:

Video depositions from Arm engineers and managers

• Internal messages suggesting Arm has no basis to sue Qualcomm after the Nuvia acquisition but only after the company ships actual products

• Another opinion is that Arm ARM doesn’t help in designing processors or developing any features

• For the compute platform (Hamoa), Qualcomm started the project with Nuvia implementer ID and changed it to that of Qualcomm

• Emails suggesting Qualcomm was complaining Arm substantially increased its royalty rates after the company disbanded it’s custom core effort

• Messages suggesting Qualcomm complained that Apple’s cores have 20-25% better performance than Arm cores

Dr. Murali Annavaram – Qualcomm expert witness

• Professor at USC, previously worked for Intel and Nokia, lots of awards/recognitions

• Reviewed source code of Qualcomm and Nuvia RTL

• Explained what microarchitecture is and how designing cores involves switching 15 billion transistors on and off etc, in simple terms to the jury

• 1000s of microarchitecture blocks in a chip – computing, storage, memory, scheduler etc.

• Opined strongly that Nuvia/ Qualcomm CPU cores do not use or are derived from Arm technology

• Claimed that the commonality between Arm RTL and Qualcomm RTL is less than 1%

• RTL codes are regularly regenerated, so most of the codes in cores will be Qualcomm’s

• The commonality between Nuvia/Arm RTL codes highlighted by Arm was mostly in comments, not in code

• Long winding back and forth between Arm counsel and Dr. Annavaram on whether Arm complaint cores are derivative of Arm technology. The confusion stems from how they are defined differently in two parts of the contract.

• Annavaram said, he is not a lawyer, and he can’t opine on how it is defined in the contract. But based on his technical knowledge, cores are not a derivative

Cristiano Amon

• Explained Qualcomm and Arm relationship in the last few years – started with ALA for building the first smartphone SOC, when Arm didn’t have its core

• Arm came to Qualcomm with TLA deal and made the company stop its custom core effort

• Arm fell behind Apple in performance and even behind Intel and AMD in PCs

• Had a few executive-level meetings with Arm to complain about it

• Bought Nuvia because of Gerard Williams, and his reputation at Apple building Apple M series chips

• Worked with Arm’s then-CEO Simon Segars to resolve the Nuvia licensing issue but in vain

• Got a call from TM Roh, head of Samsung Mobile, asking for assurance of supply of Snapdragon chips. He was worried because the chairman of Arm board and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son had told him that Qualcomm’s Arm license will expire in 2025 and may not be extended (actually, the contract runs till 2028 with an option to extend for five more years)

• Agreed to Arm’s “Piano” analogy but gives qualifications (e.g., accordion also has same keys)

• Went to Nuvia first to create custom CPU but didn’t workout

• Strongly said to many questions that Qualcomm is committed to honoring all contracts, not just license ones

• Qualcomm CFO’s initial Nuvia price estimate was $500B

• Reiterated that he didn’t believe Qualcomm needed permission from Arm to buy Nuvia but asked for approval anyway to maintain good relationship

• Said it is very unreasonable for Arm to ask for the destruction of Nuvia’s work, which was not dependent on Arm’s license

• Was asked about his compensation, for which he replied that he didn’t remember and said it’s public information

Summary of Day 2

Check out the summary of Day 1 here.

The second day had very interesting morning and boring afternoon sessions. The most important discussion was whether processor design and RTL are a derivative of Arm’s technology. During Nuvia founder, CEO, and now Qualcomm SVP Gerard Williams’s testimony, Arm’s lawyer tried to corner him into agreeing to that. She even pointed to the Nuvia ALA text, which seems to suggest that Nuvia’s technology is a derivative of Arm’s technology (Arm ARM – Architecture Reference Manual). But Gerard vehemently opposed and fought against it throughout his lengthy testimony.

This assertion of derivative seems an overreach and should put a chill down the spine of every Arm customer, especially the ones that have ALA, which include NXP, Infineon, TI, ST Micro, Microchip, Broadcom, Nvidia, MediaTek, Qualcomm, Apple, and Marvell. No matter how much they innovate in processor design and architecture, it can all be deemed Arm’s derivative and, hence, its technology.

Today Arm finished its testimonies, and Qualcomm started with its witnesses. Tomorrow, I expect to see Qualcomm vehemently fighting against Arm’s assertion and most likely see Qualcomm CEO Christian Amon take the witness stand.

Come back tomorrow for the third day’s update.

Highlights of Day 2:

The second day saw testimonies from Gerard Wiliams, a couple of expert witnesses, Jonathan Weiser, SVP of Qualcomm, and a product manager from Arm.

• Arm tried to link Nuvia’s processor design work to ALA in many ways. Their lawyer grilled Gerard by showing many different parts of the contract, his presentations, internal emails, messages, and other things to prove this point. Gerard did a great job defending against all of them. However, an obscure explanation for the derivates of Arm’s technology (known as ARM – Architecture Reference Manual) in Nuvia’s ALA seems to indicate that Nuvia’s architecture (design and RTL code) is part of it. Gerard disagreed with it.

• I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know how to interpret this seeming mention, and how strong will it stand. More importantly, how much weight Jury will give it., vis-à-vis all the testimony they have heard yesterday.

• There were three expert witnesses today, two from Arm and one from Qualcomm. The first was Dr. Robert Colwell. He tried to say that processor designs are dependent on Arm ARM, but buckled during cross-examination because of inconsistencies in responses. Second was Dr. Shuo-Wei (Mike) Chen, who analyzed the RTL codes between Nuvia and Qualcomm cores and saw similarities, which was expected. Third was Dr. Murali Annavaram, who opined on Qualcomm’s claim about Arm using some other Nuvia’s IP without permission.

Key Points from the testimonies:

Gerard Williams

This was the longest and most consequential testimony.

• Nuvia Founder and CEO, now Qualcomm SVP, previously worked for Apple and Arm

• He looked a little bit unsure in the beginning but became confident as the questioning progressed

• Rejected Arm’s claim that Nuvia needed approval from Arm for acquisition

• Said he made sure during ALA negotiations that Nuvia had ownership of all the technology it developed, independent of Arm’s technology

• Asserted that processor design and RTL code are independent of Arm’ ARM

• Processors become Arm-compatible after they are certified as such, not when designing

• When Nuvia designs were transferred to Qualcomm, they were still in design, so they were not yet Arm-compatible

• Reiterated that Arm ARM is freely available on the internet for anybody to download, hence not confidential

• Only the latest versions of the ARM are confidential and will eventually released on the internet

• In compliance with ALA, Nuvia destroyed confidential information (latest, non-pubic ARM documents) during acquisition

• Claimed ARM is not a recipe for creating a processor. Even if somebody fully studied the ARM they can’t design a processor

• Explained how designing processors needs a lot of engineering talent and experience. That’s why he built a team with about 300 engineers (150 CPU experts + 150 System/SoC experts)

• Nuvia first tried to use Arm’s TLA but ultimately decided to build its own cores using ALA, hence ended with both licenses

• Nuvia ALA had a clause that made it null after any acquisition

• Disagreed that Nuvia got a deep-discount deal, paid $22M

Dr. Robert Colwell – Arm’s expert witness

• Ex-Intel, Ex-DARPA, previously consulted with Qualcomm

• Opined that processor design and RTL are dependent on the architecture

• Asserted that there was commonality in Arm RTL and Nuvia RTL

• Buckled under cross-examination because of inconsistencies between the deposition statements and today’s testimony ( ISA is useless, stats used, etc.)

Dr. Shuo-Wei (Mike) Chen – Arm expert witness

• Professor at USC, MS & PhD at UC Berkeley

• Studied the commonality between Nuvia and Qualcomm cores

• Code commonality: 57% in Compute, 47 % in Mobile, 37% in Auto, and 20% in new unnamed platforms

• This is no surprise, as Qualcomm has readily agreed that it built its cores on Nuvia design

• Since Compute was the first commercial solution, it had the highest commonality and went down as it was introduced in to other domains

Jonathn Weiser

• 30 years at Qualcomm, was involved in negotiating ALA and TLA

• Qualcomm ALA and TLA signed in 2013, after 2-3 years of negotiations

• Earlier TLA was signed in 1995, and TLA in 2003

• ALA was amended in 2017

• Qualcomm informed Arm in Jan 2021 that Nuvia engineers have joined Qualcomm and will be covered by the company’s ALA

Background

Qualcomm is one of the largest customers of Arm. However, ever since Qualcomm announced that it is acquiring Nuvia, the two companies have been at odds regarding their license contracts, culminating in today’s court trail. Today was the first day of this jury trial.

Check out my article series on the details of the fight between the two companies for more details.

Summary of Day 1

On the first day, both companies fired their first salvos through opening statements and testimonies and tried to set the narrative for the other party. Arm is trying to convince the jury that Qualcomm acquired Nuvia to save on license costs. It knows that it needs a new license to use Nuvia technology, but it doesn’t want to negotiate with Arm. They tried to negotiate with Qualcomm, but since they couldn’t agree on new terms, they had no other choice than to sue.

On the other hand, Qualcomm is trying to project that it acquired Nuvia because Arm was falling behind on performance, and its current ALA with Arm covers Nuvia technology. Additionally, Arm is trying to ask for higher licensing fees to cater to the demand of its parent company, SoftBank, to increase its revenue.

In my view, Arm’s opening statement was simple and told a complete story. It presented with a soft, almost victim-like demeanor. Qualcomm’s statement was more assertive and included many strong facts (e.g., Arm internal communications saying Qualcomm has “Bombproof” ALA).

Testimonials were quite informative and revealed many interesting facts, some rumored and others unknown (e.g. Arm considered a fully vertically integrated approach). Arm’s first testimony was bungled during cross-examination, the second was neutral, and the last one was powerful.

The day started balanced, swung toward Qualcomm, and ended with a neutral/slight advantage to Qualcomm.

Come back tomorrow for the second day’s update.

Highlights of Day 1 :

The first day started with pretrial discussions, opening statements from both companies and testimonies from Plaintiff Arm. Today’s witnesses were Arm Chief Commercial Officer Will Abbey, SVP Paul Williamson, and CEO Rene Haas, in that order. Key points of the Arm opening statement

• Arm gave a deeply discounted licensing model to Nuvia, expecting to benefit when the company is acquired. The contract clearly states that the acquisition needs approval from Arm to assign its license to the new company.

• It used a metaphor of piano keys to explain its licensing model – its tech tells what note keys should play, and it doesn’t matter how big the keys look, what music they create, etc.

• Claimed that Qualcomm bought Nuvia to reduce its cost because the royalty rate for an Architecture License Agreement (ALA) is much lower than a Technology License Agreement (TLA). Showed a Qualcomm email claiming about $1.4B annually

• Replied to one of Qualcomm’s claims that since Arm specifications are openly available on their website, hence not confidential, by saying license to use them.

Key points of the Qualcomm opening statement

• Qualcomm reiterated it doesn’t need Nuvia ALA, as its own ALA with Arm covers Nuvia technology. Shared a lot of Arm’s internal emails/messages to show it also understood this, but sued Qualcomm to increase its revenue (Qualcomm has a “bombproof” license).

• Used a metaphor of home to explain its view of licensing – the specification of doors, windows, etc, is similar to Arm license, but Qualcomm still needs to build the home, which is significant work and innovation. Developing the underlying RTL and creating processes is akin to this.

• Said Qualcomm had to buy Nuvia as Arm was falling behind in performance

• Arm’s deal made Qualcomm licensing 100-400% more expensive and included conditions like Nuvia engineers not working on new architecture design for 3 years, etc.

• Showed a lot of Arm internal communication regarding how the change in Arm management /ownership pushed it to go hard against Qualcomm

Key Points from the testimonies:

Will Abbey

• Long-time Arm executive, was responsible for Nuvia and Qualcomm relationship

• Reiterated Arm’s stance, said this is the first and the only time Arm is suing a customer in its entire history, and the only instance when the license was terminated (Nuvia)

• Said Qualcomm requested, and Arm assigned licenses when the former acquired CSR and Atheros. These were TLA, whereas Nuvia had ALA

• Documents revealed Qualcomm ALA/TLA licensing rates:

  • ALA – 1.1% / $0.58

  • TLA – 5.3% / $2.2

• Surprised that Nuvia executives were never present in any negotiations after the acquisition

• During cross-examination, Qualcomm’s lawyer pointed out many inconsistencies between his statements during the sworn deposition and today’s statement (e.g., during the deposition, Will had said Nuvia had canceled its license but said Arm canceled it now). For that, he had to explain that he didn’t prepare well for the deposition, and preparation for the testimony “triggered” more memories. However, the deposition was almost one year closer to the actual events than today’s testimony.

Paul Williamson

• Currently leads IoT business but was responsible for mobile business during the Nuvia acquisition

• Reiterated many of Arm’s stances and things expressed by Will, such as CSR, Atheros assignment, and others

• During cross-examination, many Arms internal emails/messages about what Qualcomm ALA covers were revealed. One key exchange was between him and Arm’s licensing person, where the latter opined Qualcomm ALA covered Nuvia technology

• Discussion revealed Qualcomm ALA is valid till 2028, with an option to extend for five more years with a $1M/year fee

• Arm offered a new deal to Qualcomm, called the “TC model,” which had total processor licensing (CPU, GPU, & others) for ~500% higher licensing price

• Arm sent letters to its (and Qualcomm’s) customers and PC OEMs about Qualcomm working products for which Arm canceled licenses.

Rene Haas

This was probably the longest and most consequential testimony.

• 11 years at Arm, 35 years in the Semiconductor industry

• He said, since he authorized the litigation, he felt he had to come to the testimony

• Talked about impressive Arm growth, which really took off in 2013. Highlighted looking to add more value and increase revenue

• Shared slide on how Arm is looking to outperform Nuvia with Black Hawk (Cortex X925)

• Cross-examination was full of discussion around tons of Arm internal communications

• Lots of messages and emails on how Qualcomm (and another player, most likely Apple’s) ALA rates are low and need to be unwound to increase Arm revenue

• The final offer to Qualcomm was a one-time $123M assignment fee, the current ALA for mobile, and different rates for Compute, Auto, and others, which was rejected

• Disagreed with previous CEO’s “finding middle ground with Qualcomm” approach

• Discussions with SoftBank’s (which owns 90% of Arm) Masayoshi Son to keep the pressure up with Qualcomm, and overall increase in Arm revenue

• Arm only has between 5 – 10 ALA customers

• Some of Arm’s disclosures to the UK government during the Nvidia acquisition were not consistent with its positions elsewhere, and Rene had to explain the reasons (mostly timing)

• Arm considered fully vertical model, making its own processor products. Even joked about how that would blow everybody else

• Also suggested collaborated vertical integration with Samsung LSI for Samsung devices

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Creators, whether in major corporations, ad agencies, or individuals, are constantly under pressure to create unique, stylized content. For many, Adobe Stock is the go-to place to find appropriate imagery. However, finding the exact image in the right colors, background, and style is almost impossible, especially if there are strict branding guidelines. But no more! Adobe’s newly introduced Gen AI-enabled features will allow creators to transform stock images and quickly and easily create exactly what they want.

These features will also increase the usability of contributed images and contributors’ earning potential without any additional effort.

AI-powered image transformation

In a blog post, Adobe announced a suite of features built right into Adobe Stock, all powered by its Firefly AI model. Firefly was introduced in 2023 and has created more than 13 billion images. The model is already available on other Adobe products, such as Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Adobe Express, Lightroom, and others.

The new features can be grouped into four categories:

Background: Easily remove/modify image background. With the click of a button, you can remove the background, change it to the background of another image, or even create a new one using your imagination and text prompts.

Style: Convert the style of any image to that of a reference. This is extremely useful for converting images to comply with companies’ style guidelines.

Composition: Just like Style, you can change the color scheme, depth, shadows, outline, etc., of any image to that of a reference or create an entirely new one.   

Expand and resize: Crate any sized version of the image. This uses Firefly’s very popular “Generative Fill” functionality right within Adobe Stock. You can convert portrait orientation into landscape, 4:3 into 16:9, or from any size to any other size as if it was natively created in that format.

With millions of images in Adobe Stock, your imagination is the only limit to how many variations you can create. That means any image you create can be as unique as you like and perfectly align with your company’s color pallet, style, and brand guidelines or the theme you are trying to project. You can also create collaterals in any size or form to suit different needs, such as for the website, banner, flyer, T-shirt, packing, or anything else. All of this is done within minutes through simple clicks or descriptive text prompts.

These features allow creators to easily scale up and cost-effectively keep their content pipeline filled. Most importantly, Firefly is commercially safe, giving creators or their companies peace of mind no matter how many variations are created.

Higher earning potential for contributors

Adobe Stock contributors already receive higher compensation for agreeing to use their images for AI model training. These new Gen AI features add a new dimension and a new revenue opportunity. Since the same images can be used in unlimited variations, their usage can dramatically increase without any additional effort, thereby increasing the revenue potential of contributors.

Further, the higher revenue potential can even spur the growth of new contributors and encourage existing ones to contribute even more. As I explained in my article, contrary to the misguided belief that AI hurts creators, it might actually help them.

 

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Samsung Mobile had a launch event for Fan Edition (FE) versions of this year’s Galaxy phone, watch, and flagship Tablets on Sep 25^th, 2024, in New York, at its Manhattan office. I was one of the select industry analysts invited to the event. The theme “Galaxy Al for All” was apt for the event, as all the devices announced had Galaxy AI support, including the first-ever AI-enabled Galaxy tab.

The most noteworthy devices were the Galaxy Tabs, not because of their AI function but because of the SoC that powered them—MediaTek Dimensity 9300+. This marks MediaTek’s entry into the premium device category in the US. As expected, all the FE devices were powered by Samsung’s own Exynos SoCs.

Here is the full list of announced devices and their salient features:

Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra / S10+

• Display: Dynamic AMOLED 2x (120Hz)

• Display Size: 14.6in / 12.4in

• Memory: Up to 16 GB RAM + 1TB / Up to 12GB RAM + 512GB

• Battery: 11,200 mAh / 10,009 mAh

• Wi-Fi 6E (S10+ has 5G option)

• SoC: MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ (MT6989)

(Octacore: 4 x 3.25GHz + 4 x 2GHz)

• Full suite of Galaxy AI tools

Galaxy S24 FE

• Display: Dynamic AMOLED 2x (60/120Hz)

• Display size: 6.7-inch FHD+

• Cameras: 12MP Ultra Wide + 50MP Wide + 9MP Telephoto + 10MP Front

• Battery: 4700 mAh

• SoC: Exynos 2400e

• Full suite of Galaxy AI tools

Galaxy Watch FE LTE

• Cellular connectivity for call and text

• Upgrade to the existing version

After the event, the demo space was opened, which had ample new devices, as well as recently announced devices to check out and experience. More importantly, the key Samsung product managers responsible for the announced products were also available for discussion and Q&A. This was very helpful, as Samsung didn’t do any pre-briefings for this announcement.

Tantra’s take:

This was a short and very productive event, without much fanfare. “AI for all” has been a common theme these days, where all companies are trying to bring AI to all types and tiers of devices. Interestingly, AI capability seems to be the same or similar across tiers. This is to encourage and stimulate AI usage, not use it as a tiering mechanism. It makes perfect sense now, but I am sure, as the AI usage picks up, those capabilities will also be tiered.

As evident from the recent consumer feedback, there hasn’t been an AI “device upgrade super cycle” that many were expecting. In my view, that is because, unlike hardware features like an upgraded camera or faster modem, the benefits of many AI features are more subtle. Users will not see an immediate, observable step-up in experience when these AI features are enabled. For example, things like circle-to-search, sketch-to-image, magic erasure, magic fill, etc., are not used on an everyday basis. But when they do use them, it feels like magic. So, these will gradually grow on people, and at some point, they become something that they can’t live without.

So, in my view, instead of users running now to stores to buy new devices for these AI features, it will be more like demanding them when buying future devices. They would even be open for newer, more upgraded features.

Other features like instant translation and live captioning might be useful for select people working with content in different languages, dealing with people from different countries, or even of different generations. Samsung mentioned that some of these are the most used AI features on its phones, even in the USA.

As mentioned, the SoCs powering these devices is definitely noteworthy. The FE devices were powered by Samsung Exynos SoCs.  However, Galaxy S10 series tablets being powered by MediaTek SoC was a major development.  MediaTek, till now, has been mostly supplying SoCs to the mid and lower their devices in the USA, for example, Samsung’s A-series phones. But it seems it has shattered that glass ceiling and entered the premium club. This is even more interesting considering that Tab S10+ also has a 5G version with a supposedly MediaTek-integrated modem. With all the rumors about the S25 flying around, it seems like next year’s Samsung Unpacked, which usually happens in the first quarter, will be very interesting to look forward to.

During the presentation, Samsung shared an important factoid: “1 in 4 households in the US have at least 3 Samsung devices.” This is a big opportunity for Samsung to offer a differentiated and unique “Samsung experience” for its loyal customers. This will not only reward them for their loyalty but also develop a higher affinity and stickiness for Samsung’s products and services.

Samsung could implement a thin middle layer on all its products so that they can automatically recognize other Samsung products when in the vicinity or on a common network. This can be utilized to offer the Samsung-to-Samsung experience that will be far better and more integrated than any other combination. For example, if a user has a Samsung phone, laptop, and watch, all the devices should go to silent mode if he/she joins a conference on the laptop. Similarly, notifications are shown on the watch only when it is worn and away from the phone/laptop. Also, if the user is working on the laptop, he/she shouldn’t get notifications of a new email/message on the phone kept near the laptop. These are simple use cases, but the possibilities are endless with AI. I strongly suggest Samsung invest in such use cases and fully exploit the opportunity.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

If you are looking to buy a new laptop for this school year or as a gift during the holiday season, you will be faced with a major decision: Should you buy a next-generation AI-powered Copilot+ PC? However, the recent flurry of announcements by laptop OEMs and chip providers that power them has made that decision almost a misnomer.

What is a Copilot+ PC, and why do you need it?

Copilot+ PCs are a new breed of laptops with significant on-device (Generative) Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities. To get this moniker from Windows provider Microsoft, laptops must meet or exceed specific minimum AI processing requirements. For the technically inclined, the requirement is to have a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) with at least 40 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second) processing power. Copilot+ PCs offer a full day or more battery life, lightning-fast performance, enhanced user experience and are very thin, light and sleek.

Currently, most of the AI processing happens in the cloud, which means all your information, be it your interaction with ChatGPT or text-to-image creation with many tools, is sent to the cloud. However, with Copilot+ PCs, most of that processing happens on the device. That means your data remains private and securely stored in the device. Additionally, on-device AI is more accurate, personalized, relevant and almost free. If you want more details on this, please check my articles here and here.

Even if you are not looking to use AI, you have to buy Copilot+ PCs, as they are the best of the breed, most secure and best-looking laptops in the market today, outperforming anything else, even Apple’s MacBook.

All Copilot+ PCs are not created equal

Copilot+ PCs have a lot of variances in terms of the chip platforms, various configurations of those platforms, many OEMs, price and performance tiers and more. It all started when the smartphone technology giant Qualcomm joined Microsoft and scores of PC OEMs to introduce the first Copilot+ PCs based on its Snapdragon XElite and XPlus platforms in May of this year. They set a new bar for laptop performance.

Following Qualcomm, the personal computing giant Intel and AMD introduced their Copilot+ PC platforms. Intel’s platform is called Core Ultra 200V (project name Lunar Lake), and AMD’s is called Ryzen AI300. Many OEMs announced laptops with these platforms at the recently concluded European consumer show IFA.

There are some key differences between Qualcomm and Intel/AMD platforms. Qualcomm platforms are designed using the technology from Arm, a British company. This technology has been used in smartphones for over twenty years and is known for its exceptional power efficiency. Qualcomm introduced this for PC platforms to achieve path-breaking battery life and thin, light and sleek designs, and it set the target for other vendors. Because it is new, the Arm for Windows app ecosystem is still developing. Almost all essential apps are supported, but some apps, especially some games, may not yet be supported.

Intel and AMD platforms are based on X86 technology, which has been around for over 30 years, so app compatibility is not the issue. However, the Core Ultra 200V and Ryzen AI300 are new designs, and their performance is not yet proven.

So, when choosing Copilot+ PCs, along with price points, features and others, users must also be aware of the platforms used on those PCs. For reference, here is my review of Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 7x.

Why is it a good time to buy them now?

Technology is akin to waves in the ocean — by the time one reaches shore, another one is ready just behind it. If you want to get the maximum benefits of the latest technology, you must jump in when it is reasonably mature, with ample choices in the market. Copilot+ PCs are exactly at that stage now.

Almost all PC OEMs now offer Copilot+ PCs, including Lenovo, Dell, HP, Samsung, Microsoft, Asus, Acer and many others. They are available for both consumer and enterprise segments at all price points. For example, PC market leader Lenovo has ThinkPad for enterprises, Yoga for premium consumers, IdeaPad for mid/value-tier and more. Each segment has different variations to suit every consumer and business need. Other PC OEMs have similar offerings as well. At IFA, Qualcomm even introduced a new platform targeting laptops in the $700 range.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

This year’s Lenovo Innovation World was in Berlin, right before the largest European consumer electronics show, IFA 2024. During the event, Lenovo announced scores of Intel Core Ultra 200V (aka Lunar Lake), AMD Ryzen AI300, and Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus (8 core) based Copilot+ PCs across its  ThinkPad, ThinkBook, Yoga, and IdeaPad portfolio. These address all segments (enterprise, consumer, prosumer) and price tiers. With the newly announced and already commercial Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus-based laptops, Lenovo is making Copilot+ PCs mainstream.

Let’s look at what they announced at the event:

Intel Core Ultra 200V laptops:

• Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition (15″, 9)

• Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition

• Lenovo Auto Twist AI PC proof of concept

AMD Ryzen AI300 laptops:

• The Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 (14”, 9) – Premium Prosumer

• Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 (13” and 15”, 10)

• ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 AMD – Mainstream Enterprise

• ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 and Gen 7+ – Affordable Enterprise

Snapdragon X Plus laptops

• The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x (14”, 9)

• Lenovo IdeaPad 5x 2-in-1 (14”, 9)

Other notable announcements:

• AURA Edition – Exclusive Lenovo and Intel features that include five Smart Modes for better user experience and usability, impressive Smart Share through which pictures on the phone can be instantly seen on the PC with a simple tap, and Smart Care, which gives real-time support from Lenovo technicians

• Lenovo Creator Zone – Gen AI based Image creation powered by on-device AI in collaboration with Midjourney/Stability AI.

• AI PC Fast Start—A service designed to help enterprises easily transition to AI-ready devices, maximizing ROI through AI-powered advisory and simplified deployment.

The event consisted of analyst-only private embargoed briefings and an invite-only public launch for media, partners, and customers. The briefing was very informative, with open communication with the product managers and other executives of Lenovo. It really gave a clear and in-depth understanding of the design philosophy, tradeoffs, market interest, positioning, and other topics, as well as ample hands-on time with the announced devices.

The launch event was a highly polished and produced event, attended by a sizable crowd. The event was kicked off by Emily Ketchen, Global VP & CMO of Intelligent Devices Group & International Markets at Lenovo, and hosted by Luca Rossi, EVP of Lenovo Group and President of Intelligent Devices Group (IDG). The presentation had impressive walk-ons from Pavan Davuluri of Microsoft to Michelle Holthaus of Intel, Jack Huynh of AMD, Kedar Kondap of Qualcomm, Shan Shan Wong of Stability AI, and Stefano Domenicali of Formula1.

The event was a real show of force worthy of Lenovo’s market-leading position, pushing the “Smarter AI for All” theme through its sprawling Copilot+ PC portfolio.

Tantra’s take:

This was my first Lenovo Innovation World, and I came back highly impressed by Lenovo’s ability, strategy, partnerships, and commitment to keep its global PC market leadership. Here are some specific observations and thoughts.

By embracing all the PC SoC vendors in a big way and developing a full range of Copilot+ PCs, Lenovo clearly wants to lead the market from the front. The broad portfolio provides differentiation against competition. Additionally, Lenovo, because of its scale will have lower R&D cost on per unit basis, compared to competition. 

Qualcomm’s entry into the market has shaken the PC market, setting a new, higher bar for performance. It has compelled Intel and AMD to rethink and develop solutions that can provide more than a day’s battery life and advanced AI (NPU) capabilities.

In these PCs, the competition is currently not about Copilot/AI features but more about CPU performance and battery life. The last few months have proven the Snapdragon X-series platform’s performance and confirmed the well-expected app compatibility issues. On the other hand, the benchmarks and initial testing of Intel Core Ultra 200V seem promising, and Lenovo also seems confident of its performance. However, the real test will be when these new laptops are in people’s hands in volume and are used for real workloads.

Check out our reviews of Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge laptops. Both are powered by Snapdragon X Elite.

For now, Lenovo is offering a full range of options using all the SoCs across segments and tiers, letting customers decide. The market will take some time to stabilize and determine what fits where. Ultimately, Lenovo has to position its offerings in a much more focused way so that it doesn’t confuse customers with too many choices and also not overburden its R&D budgets. There will be even more options in the future, with rumored MediaTek’s and possibly Samsung’s entry into the PC SoC market. Adding to this, the transition to Windows 11 will make it a very interesting market to observe.

Apart from SoC considerations, I think the collaborations with Intel for Aura edition products and Stability Ai for Lenovo Creator Zone were also notable for many reasons.

Many AURA features are built on Intel’s Unison app, which enables tighter PC and smartphone integration. Intel made a big splash about Unison a couple of years ago, but there was no news about it till now. AURA features are exclusive to Intel and Lenovo; both companies have invested in this effort. This shows Lenovo’s more profound commitment to Intel, considering that Lenovo could have chosen to collaborate with Microsoft to use “Link to Windows,” which offers similar capabilities. Additionally, that would have enabled such capabilities across Lenovo portfolio. Despite that they chose Intel, hence my comment.  

These laptops got the Copilot+ PC moniker mainly because of their NPU capabilities (over 40 AI TOPS), but currently, there is a dearth of AI features, apps, and use cases. To address this issue, Lenovo has partnered with Stability AI and ported its Midjourney Large Language Model (LLM) into an on-device app. This could be an excellent tool for designers and graphics artists to create images free of cost. Without mainstream “Killer Apps” for AI, I expect such collaborations to increase and expand to other AI model providers. Other PC OEMs might follow Lenovo’s lead and offer similar apps on their devices.

I am also attending Lenovo’s Tech World 2024 and analyst summit in October 2024. There will be even more insights from them. So, be on the lookout for those on this site.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

A laptop you can fall in love with, but with some minor quirks

Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is a premium laptop among over 20 Copilot+ PCs announced on May 20^th, 2024. Powered by the high-performance Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite platform variant (X1E-84-100), with top-notch hardware and software, it is a laptop targeted at premium consumer and small and midsize enterprise (SME) market segments. After using the 16-inch model for over six weeks, I can say that it is a PC one can fall in love with. 

The small quirks are mostly because of app compatibility, limited game support, and some minor annoyances with the keyboard. 

Note: Make sure to check out my other product reviews here

Gorgeous looks, excellent performance, and top-notch hardware

The difference between other PC OEMs and Samsung is that it’s not just a perfectly working device but something you love and feel proud to own. That means something that looks as beautiful as a work of art, offers the best performance, has excellent battery life, and has top-notch hardware and build. In my six weeks of testing, I found Galaxy Book4 Edge to have all these characters.

Arm-based Qualcomm’s X Elite Platform is the biggest reason behind many of these characteristics. At 12.3mm thickness (14-inch version, 10.9mm), Galaxy Book4 Edge is the thinnest Copilot+ PC. It is also extremely light, weighing only 1.55kg (14-inch, 1.16kg). It feels so light when carrying it around that often; I check my backpack to confirm I have it and haven’t forgotten it somewhere. 

Galaxy Book4 Edge is the only Copilot+ PC with a 16-inch screen option. It comes in only Sapphire Blue color, which gives it a distinctive modern look, differentiating it from the traditional aluminum grey of most other premium laptops, including the MacBook Pro.

The power of the high-performance X Elite variant becomes evident in how smoothly the applications run, be it productivity tools like Microsoft Office suite, browsers, video and audio editing, and even scores of games supported on Arm. With 45 NPU TOPS, X Elite is an AI powerhouse. Samsung claims the Galaxy Book4 Edge is 4x faster than the Galaxy Book4 (Intel Core Ultra SoC). Numerous benchmark tests have shown that X Elite is among the best, if not the best-performing, laptop SoC in the market today.

With the 61.8Wh battery, Galaxy Book4 Edge provides a full day of battery life, even on busy working days, for productivity use cases. Unsurprisingly, Samsung computing lead Anjum Hassan mentioned in our Tantra’s Mantra podcast that longer battery life was the top requirement of their customers when designing Copilot+/Arm PCs. The included 65W fast charger can charge up to 45% in just 30 minutes. Although I didn’t time my charges, I found that charging even for a few minutes during breaks generated enough juice to get on with the work, and battery life was never a concern. For most day trips, I left my charger at home.

In addition to the SoC, the other hardware on Galaxy Book4 Edge is top-notch as well. The dynamic AMOLED 3k display with an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate provides a wider range of brightness and colors that pop. 500nits brightness, Vision Booster, and anti-reflective features make the laptop usable outdoors in daylight. I did not use the touchscreen much. Book4 Edge supports Wi-Fi 7, making its connectivity futureproof. 

Copilot+, Samsung ecosystem features – Some useful, others good to have

As explained in my earlier Lenovo Yoga Slim7x review, some of the Copilot+ features are useful, while others are just good to have. The marquee “Recall” feature is still not supported. “Windows Studio Effects” is quite useful and works very well. It replaces Samsung’s proprietary “Studio Mode” feature found in earlier PCs. “Live Captions” and “Co-Creator” also worked well, but I didn’t test them much.

Among all PC OEMs, Samsung’s ecosystem features offer the best differentiation. Many of these are further enhanced in Galaxy Book4 Edge. The “Link to Windows” and “Quick Share” are much more reliable and work faster now. The “Multi-Control” feature, which allows Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets to be controlled through the Galaxy Book4 Edge’s mouse and keyboard, is as useful as ever. Additionally, the Google “Circle to search” on Galaxy phones can now be accessed through Galaxy Book4 Edge using Link to Windows, effectively bringing the feature to PCs. The importance of this is now reduced as Google Lens-based search is now available on Chrome. 

App compatibility – vastly improved, but still a “work in progress” 

I call Windows on Arm app compatibility “still in progress” because that’s exactly what it is. It is continuously improving, though. Many issues I discovered during the Yoga review have been improved or solved. For example, the WhatsApp frequent disconnection issue is almost resolved. Because of Galaxy Book4 Edge’s superior processor, many apps work better. For example, Da Vinci Resolve for Arm, out of Beta now, works smoothly for low-complexity tasks. Many engineering apps, such as Sold Works, MATLAB, and Ultimaker Cura, that I found almost unusable on others run at a decent speed on Galaxy Book4 Edge (but still not perfect).

The much-awaited Adobe Illustrator support is now available in beta. The biggest pet peeve—VPN support is now addressed, with support for many apps, including Surfshark, Express VPN, and PIA. Game support is quickly expanding as well. The official www.WorksonWoA.com portal lists nearly 1400 games, compared to 1200 during Computex in May 2024. 

Besides the app compatibility issues, Galaxy Book4 Edge has minor quirks and annoyances. First, I am not a big fan of its keyboard. Compared to Galaxy Book3, the keys are slightly elevated, not as firm, and quiet. Some keys, especially the ones wider than standard width, such as the space bar, Shift, Enter, and Backspace keys, are wiggly and noisy. The noise when typing in a quiet place like a library or working late at night could be annoying.  Also, the keys are gray, making the white lettering on them less visible. Again, I much liked the white-on-black lettering and overall build of the Galaxy Book3 keyboard.

The overall higher pricing of Copilot+ PCs could be a heartburn for some, especially when much-marketed Copilot+ features are not currently useful. Galaxy Book4 Edge is probably the most expensive of all the Copilot+ PCs. However, it is a premium offering. Despite minor quirks, I think it provides great value for the price. Also, Samsung and its retailers offer many attractive deals, significantly reducing its effective price. 

The bottom line—Galaxy Book4 Edge is a laptop that you can fall in love with, not just for its looks but also for its top-notch performance, long battery life, and excellent build. 

Check out reviews of Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and other devices 

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Generative AI (Gen AI) has already started to affect everyday life. Like any technology transition, there has been fear and criticism about how it will take away jobs and replace workers. This fear is even more pronounced in the content creation industry as Gen AI adoption has taken off with models like Adobe Firefly, Midjourney and others. Although there is some truth to this fear, in my view, it is largely overblown.

AI is still in its infancy, so I decided to speak directly to many content creators—both freelancers and corporations—to understand the impact. I learned that Gen AI is broadly helping creators significantly improve their productivity and, in some cases, even opening new revenue opportunities. Ultimately, I believe it will not be a “human vs. AI” consideration but a “human with AI vs. human without AI” race.

Gen AI is changing the content creator landscape.

As I pointed out in my earlier Forbes article, easy access to powerful tools is one of the key reasons for the meteoric rise of the creator ecosystem. The creative industry is among the first to not only commercialize but also generate new revenue with Gen AI. The relatively young workforce, eager to experiment with new things, has led to early and quick adoption.

Gen AI can significantly reduce the entry barrier and makes it more accessible. Even novices with limited experience or skill sets can generate images, videos, text, audio and other content for advertisements, marketing and product literature with simple text prompts. The ease of creation is making the industry march toward more and higher-quality content, faster turnaround and efficient delivery.

According to Market.Us, the Gen AI content creation market, estimated at around $11 billion in 2023, is projected to skyrocket to $175 billion by 2033, with an impressive 31% compound annual growth rate. This accelerated growth illustrates Gen AI’s massive impact in reshaping the creative landscape. Industry leaders like Adobe showcase how Gen AI is set to revolutionize the entire content creation supply chain.

Content creators are benefiting from Gen AI.

Today, content creation is an iterative, multistep process. It is labor-intensive, and much of it is done manually. For example, for the ideation of image creation, creators have to imagine and visualize their creativity, draw multiple rough sketches, iterate and close in on the final image. This is done on physical or digital canvas and may use some software tools, but it is still labor- and time-intensive. However, with Gen AI, you only have to imagine and describe what you need with a few prompts. AI models do the trick and almost instantly create multiple options for the image. This fast creation allows the creators to try many ideas, much more than they would have otherwise, before homing in on their target.

Similarly, once the concept is decided, Gen AI allows creators to iterate quickly, optimize many things and finalize the image. Again, this involves many more iterations than otherwise possible. So, with Gen AI, creators are limited by their imagination, not time or effort.

Many creators, especially in the corporate sector, mentioned to me that Gen AI’s significant advantage is automating routine and mundane tasks so that they can focus on creative tasks, which they excel at and enjoy. This not only improves productivity but also boosts employee morale.

Gen AI also enables the expansion of creator offerings. Creators can quickly and accurately create a multitude of variations of the same content to suit the specific needs of their customers. This is a game changer in the ad industry, where customized content is the name of the game. Additionally, it could open new opportunities. For example, creators who contribute to repositories like Adobe Stock can make more money by allowing Adobe and its customers to use their images for Gen AI training and to create derivative content. With the scrutiny of data used for training AI models increasing, more AI players will be inclined to use licensed content, further expanding the opportunity. This will create (pun intended) more income for creators for the same effort.

Will Gen AI replace content creators?

This is the crucial question. When talking to creators, I spent more time on this than any other question. The unequivocal answer I heard was “no.” One of them said that “authentic creations” will always have value. For example, original paintings are a highly valued asset. Although one can create many realistic-looking copies, that never diminishes the value of the original. In fact, as making copies becomes easier, the value often increases. There is also a groundswell of support for tagging AI-generated content, which will likely further increase the value of originals.

With AI adoption rapidly increasing, I expect it to become table stakes soon. As the rising tide elevates all boats, the baseline for almost all creators will be raised, keeping their relative competitive position intact.

It is also true that creative executives in corporations are starting to feel pressure from chief financial officers to show cost savings as a return on their investments in Gen AI tools. However, I heard from executives that there is so much demand for content that all the productivity gain will be utilized to create more content rather than making anybody redundant.

Just with any technology transition, some work will definitely be reduced. For instance, in our image generation example above, the mundane work that AI can automate is one such work. The folks responsible for such work must adapt to do it more efficiently using AI and even retrain to go up the value chain. If not, I believe they will be replaced. That’s precisely why I am saying it’s not “human vs. AI,” but “human with AI vs. human without AI.”

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Since the announcement on May 20^th, 2024, the PC industry has been abuzz with the new generation CoPilot+ PCs. Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x laptop was among over 20 models launched in June 2024. These PCs have started shipping as we enter the busy back-to-school season, which has traditionally been one of the peak buying periods for consumer PCs. 

That’s exactly what I focused on when I tested and used the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x over the last three weeks. My verdict: Excellent hardware, most commonly used apps work, but ensure the specific apps and games you need are supported before buying.

Great hardware, battery life, and looks

As the name suggests, the Yoga Slim 7x is a sleek, light, and lovely 14-inch premium consumer laptop. It is available only in a gorgeous cosmic blue color. At only 12.9mm thin and weighing 2.82 lbs., it is highly portable. For kids, this will almost feel like carrying another notebook when carrying it around the campus.

The top three unmissable features for buying this laptop are:1) Excellent performance, 2) Long battery life, and 3) Beautiful OLED display. The new powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite platform powering this PC brings the first two. Proven by a score of benchmarks, X Elite is one of the best, if not the best laptop SoC in the market today. It handled everything I threw at it, from apps to games, like a champ (check the apps section below). They all worked without the computer getting hot and, in many cases, without turning the fan on. It only got warm, and fans turned on when playing intense games or for an extended time.

Everybody, whether you are a student, a regular consumer, a productivity user, or a small business owner, will love this laptop for its very long battery life, thanks again to X Elite.  Not surprisingly, that was also one of the key design criteria for CoPilot+ PCs, as mentioned by Pooja Sathe, Lenovo’s Director and Category Leader of Worldwide Commercial AI PCs, on our Tantras Mantra podcast. If you are a power user, the 70 Wh battery will easily last more than a day. If you are a light user, it can go even a couple of days without charging. Most importantly, it goes to real sleep when you put it to sleep, and all the battery life remains intact while sleeping. And comes back from sleep very quickly, unlike today’s Windows laptops. All this means you don’t have to lug along the charger for a full day of classes or work. The included charger provides a couple of hours of runtime with only 15 minutes of charge. 

The bright 14.5” 3K OLED touch display with Dolby Vision and 90Hz refresh rate is worthy of Yoga-class and is stunning, offering better viewing even in bright sunlight. So, if you are a student sitting on the lawn during sunny summer or spring days, you can still work on it. The FHD Camera offers crystal clear video calls, the IR sensor saves the battery by turning off the display when not needed, and the manual privacy shutter gives complete peace of mind.

CoPilot+ features—some useful, others good to have

The name-sake features of this laptop were launched with a lot of fanfare. However, one of the marquee features, much promoted by Microsoft—Recall—was recalled (pun intended) before shipping due to privacy concerns. I tested all the CoPilot+, i.e., AI features on this laptop. All of them worked well. But how much you really need them is a question worth pondering. My most used feature was Windows Studio Effects. It substantially increases the quality and utility of the camera on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and video apps, with auto framing, eye contact, portrait light, filters, and other features. Many laptops today offer some of these as proprietary features, but now they are democratized by CoPilot+.

The next most used feature was Live Captions, which automatically translates any content you are listening to on the laptop to 44 languages. It works reasonably well. I tried English captions for Hindi content. The translation was accurate when the content was more structured, like a newscast. However, accuracy degraded if the speech was fast, informal, conversational, or had an accent. The use of NPU for this was clearly visible when checked through processor utilization.

I didn’t use the Co-creator much. But it seems like a useful tool for students to create diagrams, etc., for their schoolwork. These features currently seem “good to have” rather than an absolute necessity and may not be a major reason to buy CoPilot+ PCs now. However, one should remember that AI is an incredibly fast-moving field. It is highly conceivable that new, interesting, and useful AI features and apps are on the horizon. Having one of the industry’s most powerful AI capabilities with an NPU offering market-leading 45 TOPS makes these PCs futureproof. 

App compatibility—most apps work, but still a “work in progress” 

The biggest issue, by far, when I used Windows on Arm PCs a couple of years ago (reviews here and here) was app compatibility. Even simple things like Zoom and Google Meet backgrounds didn’t work. But the situation is far better now. Microsoft, Qualcomm, and even OEMs like Lenovo have put in a lot of work to ensure most of the essential apps, be it productivity apps like Microsoft Office or creative apps like many Adobe tools, work. Google recently released its Chrome browser for Arm, which has made an enormous difference, and now almost all browser-based plug-ins work. 

But if you are a tech enthusiast or an engineering college-bound student, you have to make sure the specific apps you need are supported. For example, the popular 3D CAD software Solid Works didn’t even install. The simulation software MATLAB ran sluggishly. The popular 3D printer software Ultimaker Cura was very slow for complex models. 

Even the apps that worked have some rough edges. For example, unlike others, I could not run the popular video editing software DaVinci Resolve. The popular WhatsApp messenger app would go randomly offline and needed logout/relog-ins a few times a day. I couldn’t connect my old Samsung/HP laser printer. It took some workaround and manual configuration to make Office Outlook365 work for Exchange Server setup. I don’t know whether these are not supported, need optimization, or I was doing something wrong. But again, that is symptomatic of app compatibility. Suppose apps work perfectly; it’s all good. If they don’t, you don’t know what’s wrong and can’t easily find a solution. Making things worse, there is no good resource for consumers to check and confirm whether a specific app is supported and, if yes, whether it will run as a native app or using the simulator. Microsoft – If you are reading this, please create a website with a simple look-up table for consumers to check compatibility. This basic need is not being met right now.

When it comes to gaming, it’s a mixed bag. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon claimed during his Computex 2024 keynote that they have tested 1200 games. I let my teenage son and nephews test their favorite games on Yoga. They found many that were playable with low settings, such as Bloons Tower Defense 6, Cyberpunk, Grand Theft Auto 5, and others. It’s a bummer that simple, popular games like Minecraft and Valorant are unsupported. Unlike apps, there is an aptly named website, www.WorksonWoA.com, to check the compatibility of games. 

That’s why my claim is “work in progress” for apps. The good news is that more and more developers are porting and developing apps for Windows on Arm, and compatibility will only grow. 

So, what is my recommendation for Yoga Slim 7x for back-to-school? It’s a BUY, if you are looking for a premium consumer PC that is futureproofed, but do your research if you have specific, uncommon apps or games that you can’t live without. If you are the kind who doesn’t want to be on the bleeding edge of technology and don’t want to experiment, then look elsewhere. 

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

This question arises every year when Samsung announces its latest foldable phones.

From the conception of this category in 2018 till now, only a niche group of users and consumers on the bleeding edge of technology have been trying out these foldable phones. But the latest Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 and Z Flip6 announced Wednesday may start to change that.

The reliability and performance of these phones are reaching the level of today’s premium flagship smartphones, making it worthwhile for consumers to take a closer look.

Why do you need foldable smartphones?

There are many use cases and reasons to buy a foldable phone. They differ based on whether it’s the large screen tablet-style foldable like the Galaxy Z Fold series or the classic flip-phone-style version like the Galaxy Z Flip series..

The tablet-style foldable combines the portability and convenience of regular phones with the large screens of tablets. This works for those whose primary computing device is a smartphone.

When folded, the phone’s outside display can be used for routine things like calling, texting, taking pictures, checking notifications, messages and emails. When unfolded, the larger display is perfect for web browsing, watching videos, gaming, reading books and magazines, reading and writing long emails, editing pictures and videos, and and other activities that require a larger display. Creators might even use the larger screen with a stylus as an instant canvas or a drawing board.

The flip-phone-style foldable offers the same experience as a standard smartphone with half the size.

Why is it a good time to buy foldables now?

The biggest issue so far with foldables has been they were still experimental and reportedly unreliable. The folding display and hinge technologies were also still evolving. The displays didn’t last long. Early devices were thick and heavy. Folding was imperfect, with an ugly, visible gap around the hinge. And their performance, especially camera and battery life, was inferior to that of flagship smartphones.

Additionally, they were priced much higher than the premium phones. As I described in my review of Z Fold 4, the target audience was productivity users and tech enthusiasts.

That is starting to change. The foldable display and hinge technologies have been perfected through the last five generations and are ready for prime time.

The hinge is much thinner and robust now. New materials make the phones stronger. The foldable displays are guaranteed for 200,000 folds, lasting more than ten years (for an average of 50 folds per day). Both phones are IP48 grade water and dust-resistant, critical for the folding mechanism. And the thickness is significantly reduced. Z Fold6 is only 1.6 times thicker than the equivalent Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, and the Z Flip6 is 1.9 times thicker.

They are also lighter – the Z Fold6 weighs 239 grams (just over 8 ounces), and the Z Flip6 187 grams (about 6 1/2 ounces), compared to 196 grams (just under 7 ounces) of the Galaxy S24 Plus. Above all, they use the same camera system and SoCs used for Galaxy S24 and other flagship phones. When you buy a foldable today, you buy the best-performing and best-looking phone without any compromises.

Galaxy Z Fold6 and Z Flip6: The best foldable smartphones in the country

Almost every major smartphone OEM besides Apple offers foldable smartphones. That includes Samsung and Motorola in the USA and many Chinese vendors such as Huawei, Honor, Oppo, Vivo, and others sold globally. Z Fold6 and Z Flip6 have the best specifications and performance.

Z Fold6 has bright and expansive, 7.6-inch foldable and 6.3-inch outside displays, uses market-leading Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, and has a high-quality 3-camera system. The Z Flip6 received a significant upgrade this year. It has a bigger battery and many personalization options – widgets and wallpapers for the outer display, decorated cases, and other accessories.

Both foldables support Galaxy AI, which has many useful features. Those include Circle to Search, which allows easy search by just circling images on the screen; Note Assist, which offers transcription, translation, summarization, and voice recording of notes; Sketch to Image, which creates high-quality images using simple sketches and drawings; and many more. The dual display setup will make AI features like the Interpreter and Live Translate even more useful on foldables.

Other considerations before buying a foldable

The biggest hurdle for anybody buying foldables is the price. Z Fold6 start at $1899.99, which is pretty steep, making it suitable only if one can increase productivity and have specific use cases in mind. Also, consider that it can replace your phone and tablet and even reduce laptop usage. On the other hand, Z Flip6 is more affordable, starting at $1099.99. It is only slightly more expensive than the Galaxy S24 Plus.

Additionally, Samsung and service carriers have many offers to sweeten the purchase. Preorders spark offers that are even more generous.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

With good cameras and photo editing tools available on smartphones today, we all want our pictures on Instagram, Facebook, or those framed in our homes to be nearly perfect. Whether it is your kid’s graduation or a family vacation, you want them to be flawless so that you can celebrate and remember the moments that matter.

The challenge really comes when those once-in-a-lifetime pictures don’t turn out as great as you remember them, and you feel like you might need to be a pro to figure out how to use all those photo editing tools.

No more. New artificial intelligence tools in Adobe Lightroom make photo editing easier and more intuitive than ever. With just a few taps in the Lightroom mobile app, you can adjust the photo’s lighting, remove unwanted objects, enhance the focus, and more.

Removing undesirable things in your photos

Capturing photos to savor special memories is something everyone can relate to. For example, imagine it’s your daughter’s graduation – a moment you want to capture perfectly. You snap a great shot, but there are frustrating distractions like trashcans, power lines, other grad photobombers, and more.

You can’t recreate these once-in-a-lifetime experiences. But you can polish those pictures if, like millions of smartphone users, you use Adobe Lightroom.

With Lightroom’s latest feature, “Generative Remove,” you can fix your photo quickly. Simply identify the unwanted objects and distractions in the photo with your finger and click remove. Within seconds, the app removes them and replaces them with something that matches and blends with the surroundings, as if those distractions were not in the picture. It generates pixel-perfect, high-quality, realistic results. The tool even provides three generated options to select the version you prefer most.

The tool is excellent at editing even the most complicated backgrounds and surroundings, from removing stains from patterned clothing to removing someone standing in front of busy wallpaper.

You might be thinking, there are already tools like this out there, so what’s the big deal? It’s simple: the difference is ease of use and quality. For example, when editing the boundaries between the desired and undesired objects – for example, the person’s hair against a background or objects of the same color like water and the sky – the tool does a great job delivering results that are pixel perfect so that the edited generations blend in with the surrounding areas.

And, adhering to responsible AI principles, the photos modified with Generative Remove are embedded with that information, using a technology called “Content Credentials”, which we explained in an earlier USA TODAY article.

Lens Blur

Another great tool to highlight the focus of your photo is Lightroom’s Lens Blur, which helps you achieve perfect depth and focus in just a few taps on your phone. It enables you to achieve blur effects, tailor-made to your photo with Adaptive Presets.

To achieve the perfect blur, the AI algorithm builds the image’s 3D map, meaning it estimates how near or far various things in the image are from the Lens. If you are a fiddler and would like to fine-tune focus and blurring further, there are many options to vary the depth, where to focus, and what kind of background blurring you want.

Photo Editing for Everyone

Creating pro-quality images with smartphones is not just a catchphrase. It really can be handy in many cases, from creating stunning portraits of you and your loved ones to creating almost impossible-to-take pictures like you standing alone in front of the Eiffel Tower to even erasing your ex from some of your favorite vacation pictures.

No matter your skill level, these tools give you the confidence to stay in the moment when you take photos, knowing you can edit them later to get the exact look you want. The possibilities are endless with Lightroom’s latest AI features.

If you want to know what’s under the hood, this is all made possible by Adobe’s Firefly generative AI model. Firefly powers AI features across Adobe’s consumer and professional creativity tools.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

After a few years of a lull because of COVID-19, the Huawei Analyst Summit was in-person this year. As usual, it was in Shenzhen from April 17^th to April 19th, attended by many prominent analysts worldwide, but only a select few from the USA. The event’s highlight was 5.5G, Huawei’s name/brand for the next phase of 5G. The company went over the board to show that 5.5G is not just a vision but the real deal.

Apart from the keynotes and sessions, the event’s highlight was the tour of China Unicom’s Innovation Center in the industrial province of Guangzhou. During the tour, Unicom executives illustrated their groundbreaking work with Huawei in developing and deploying many realistic use cases of 5.5G.

Regarding the next phase of 5G, it doesn’t take too much to understand how far ahead Huawei and Chinese operators are compared to their cohorts in the US, Europe, and other regions. At the same time, questions remain on how all the restrictions put on Huawei regarding access to semiconductor technologies will affect their lead. However, those restrictions didn’t affect Huawei’s share in 2023 global infrastructure revenues.

What is “5.5G?”

Naming the phases of cellular standards has always been a fun but confusing exercise. 3GPP, the standards body, comes up with the official “marketing name” for specific sets of releases. But, vendors and operators take liberty in spinning their own names and definitions. This practice gets particularly abusive in the in-between phases. For example, LTE Advanced, a 3GPP name, had many alternatives, such as 4.5G, 4G Advanced, Pre-5G, and Evolved 5G. And it seems the story will be repeated for the next phase of 5G. 3GPP calls the Releases 18 and beyond 5G Advanced. However, Huawei and some of its friendly operators are calling it 5.5G. Even more confusing is that the features included in 5G Advanced and 5.5G are similar but not the same. If so, then what exactly is 5.5G?

5.5G is the vision to take the performance and usability of 5G to the next level without being beholden to any specific 3GPP releases. As defined by Huawei, 5.5G is a heterogeneous mix of standard and product features. It includes things like Red-Cap (Rel.17), passive IoT (Rel.18), utilizing all bands (from 900 MHz to mmWave), improvements such as Giga MIMO, beamforming, and Extremely Large Antenna Arrays (ELAA), as well as using AI for better O&M and optimization, etc. it can provide up to 10 Gbps downlink and up to 1 Gbps uplink speeds, higher capacity, lower latency, and power consumption while supporting next-gen applications, services, and use cases.

MWC 2024 was Huawei’s coming out party for 5.5G. At the analyst summit, the objective was to show progress on the ground and explain what’s on the horizon.  

Highlights of the event

The event was spread into three days. The first day was full of keynotes and a couple of AI sessions. The second day had several overlapping breakout sessions for networking, cloud, data center, etc. I focused mainly on the network track and couldn’t attend others. The third day was all about tours and live demos. I chose Huawei 5.5G Park and China Unicom Guangzhou Innovation Center tours.

Keynotes

The keynotes were delivered by Zhou Hong, Huawei Strategy Research Institute’s President, and Eric Xu, Deputy Chairman and Rotating Chairman of Huawei. As one would expect, the keynotes were all about the grand vision of how AI will change the world and the role Huawei will play in it. Eric talked about 5.5G, Harmony OS strategy, Self-driving opportunities, energy generation, and more.

For Harmony OS, Huawei’s initial focus is on building a solid ecosystem in China with more than 5,000 local developers and later expanding to international markets.

Huawei is developing its own pre-trained Chinese NLP model, Pangu, and plans to use it across industries along with its Ascend cloud services and Kunpeng (Arm-based) silicon platform.

Specifically, regarding AI in telecom, the current focus is on simplifying network management and optimization. Huawei’s vision is to fully automate managing telecom networks through four levels, akin to autonomous driving levels. You can get a glimpse of the keynote here.

AI for RAN session

In the AI for RAN session, Eric Zhou, VP and CMO of Huawei Wireless Solutions, introduced three critical elements of their AI strategy:

1) Telecom Foundational AI model for network policy analysis and decision-making

 – Huawei will offer the models to operators and even allow them to tune it to their needs

2) RAN Intelligent Agents – For O&M, Network Optimization and Provisioning

 – O&M Agent minimizes human intervention, allows faster troubleshooting, and automates tasks to improve productivity and efficiency of operations

 – Network Optimization Agent optimizes the network across many dimensions, such as user experience, performance, energy efficiency, and many others, which is magnitudes better than today’s single-dimensional optimization.

 – Provisioning Agent enables high precision SLA visualization, zero-touch, agile provisioning, and fast time to market for new features, etc.

3) RAN Digital Twin System

1. As the name suggests, this is building a complete high-accuracy digital twin of the network so that all the changes, updates, and new features can be thoroughly tested and optimized before deployment in the actual network. This will allow quick deployment and minimize post-upgrade issues.

All these are part of Huawei’s 5.5G vision.

5.5G Readiness, BTS, Small cells, Spectrum and Antenna Sessions

Huawei and their Chinese operator partners made a heavy pitch that the market is ready for 5.5G: China Mobile has publicly announced the 5.5G upgrade for 300 cities; Other Chinese operators, China Unicom and China Telecom, have also committed to 5.5G; STC in Saudi Arabia, du in UAE and some other operators in Europe have committed to 5.5G as well. Just to be sure, some of these have announced 5G Advanced commitments, which Huawei is counting as 5.5G. From an infrastructure readiness point of view, Huawei has commercialized many features of 5.5G. There are already enough RedCap chipset vendors and devices in the market. More importantly, Huawei claims applications, services, and business cases are ready to utilize 5.5G and monetization opportunities for operators.

Huawei product folks talked about how their popular Meta AAU baste station products are ready for 5.5G, supporting some of the initial features and the vision of 5.5G. The indoor session showcased their strong product folio with examples of large-scale deployments. They also illustrated interesting use cases, such as small cells in parking garages, autonomous parking, and the summoning of self-driving cars. The antennas session discussed PoC for digital antennas, whose propagation pattern, gain,  azimuth, and tilt can be changed remotely.

5.5G Park and China Unicom Guangzhou Tour

Huawei took a bunch of analysts to their office in Shenzhen, which has a live over-the-air 5.5G test network. They showed demos of autonomous vehicle, Giga MIMO, Passive IoT, mmWave, RedCap, FWA use cases, and others.

But the most impressive was the tour of the innovation center of China Unicom Guangzhou branch. Guangzhou is one of the most industrialized provinces in the country, accounting for 10% of overall Unicom subscriptions and revenue. Huawei claimed that Unicom Guangzhou is at the forefront of 5.5G commercialization. So, developments here are at scale and matter for the entire network. They have an extensive 5G SA network and sizable RedCap development, with 127,000 sites providing the whole region, and offer more than 20 modules and terminals.

Being the country’s Industrial base, Guangzhou has no dearth of applications, services, and use cases, spanning consumer, enterprise, and industrial segments. The same applies to private networks. Huawei and Unicom have deployed private networks in many factories, warehouses, ports, etc.

One interesting and highly successful use case Unicom highlighted was providing guaranteed high-quality connectivity to online influencers/streamers at a higher price. Influencer streaming is extremely popular and has become a major e-commerce platform in China. Unicom even uses network slicing to ensure quality for these subscribers. Unicom also talked about other commercialized industrial, home/enterprise connectivity, and edge services that will use the capabilities of 5.5G and provide monetization opportunities for operators.

A unique use case I haven’t seen before was using 5G for the command and control system for Drones, which Unicom calls Low-Altitude Network. It manages 9,100 Sq.km of coverage area with more than 300 Drone hangers.

Tantra’s Take

There are differing views on whether China and Huawei are behind at par or ahead of the USA in 5G and its evolution. There is also the notion that all the latest technology is being developed in the western hemisphere, and China is ahead only because of the enormous size of its network. But based on the discussions at HAS24, especially the things that China Unicom had already commercialized and has in its pipeline, for the next phase of 5G, there wouldn’t be any question on how far ahead Chinese operators are compared to their US and European counterparts.

In my view, the 5.5G naming is confusing. I didn’t get a clear answer as to whether 5.5G is a B2B name or will also be extended to end consumers. Since 3GPP already has 5G Advanced branding, and there is no one-to-one mapping with 5.5G, confusion between the two is inevitable. For example, when services are launched, it’s unclear whether the devices will display “5GA” or “5.5G.” It might vary between operators and regions, further confusing everybody.

The primary objective of the next phase of 5G, whatever you call it, is services beyond simple smartphone-based broadband—taking 5G connectivity to IoT, enterprises, industrial applications, drones, private networks, and much more. To win in this phase, there are three primary requirements: 1) Market demand; 2) Infrastructure to service that demand; and 3) Technological capability. Let’s examine where the operators and vendors in the USA and EU stand relative to the Chinese operators and Huawei.

Looking at the market requirements, there has to be enough demand, with attractive monetization opportunities, for the services enabled by this phase. These include cases that utilize extreme speeds, lower latency, and features like RedCap, network slicing, etc. The need has to be large enough and on a network-wide basis. And there have to be viable business models to make the investment worthwhile. Currently, this is a major challenge for the operators in the US, EU, and other developed markets. However, in China, because of the large industrial base, much higher digitization of the economy, and higher affinity of consumers to use the latest technology, there is a natural demand for the services the next phase of 5G will offer.

Regarding Infrastructure requirements, 5G deployed in Sub-6GHz bands (for ubiquitous coverage) and sufficient spectrum/capacity are a must to realize almost anything the next phase of 5G offers. Additionally, 5G Stand Alone (SA) is key to support things like RedCap and Network Slicing. Most 5G networks in the western hemisphere are Non-Stand Alone. Operators in the USA have enough spectrum, but the ones in Europe don’t. The 5G footprint in Europe is pretty limited. On the contrary, most of the 5G networks in China are 5G SA. All Chinese operators have a good amount of spectrum.

Technology-wise, it was pretty clear from the event that Huawei seem to have the network technology to bring the next phase of 5G to fruition. There is a healthy ecosystem of devices and apps/services vendors to bring the 5.5 vision to life.

However, the questions remain about Huawei’s access to the latest semiconductor technology and supply chain. All the vision Huawei painted relies heavily on a sound semiconductor ecosystem. Interestingly, that subject was not discussed during the event. To Huawei’s defense, despite tough US sanctions, the company managed to slightly increase its global infrastructure revenue share in 2023. It would be interesting to observe how the company will fare with these restrictions, which are expected to be in place for an extended period.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Mobile World Congress was back to its past glory this year with more than 100,000 visitors, as reported by the organizer GSMA. As expected, there was lots of news, and open RAN was one of the major themes. Among many things I cover, I found it interesting how Samsung Networks expanded its partnerships, extended its reach and solidified its position as one of the top 5G global infrastructure players.

The open RAN action started much before MWC this year. Verizon touted that it has deployed more than 130,000 open RAN compatible radios in February 2024. Before that, AT&T, which hasn’t been outspoken about its open RAN strategy, surprised the industry with a large single-vendor contract to Ericsson in December 2023. This contract upset the infrastructure market structure. Suddenly Ericsson, a laggard so far, became an overnight open RAN champion. Meanwhile the deal reduced Nokia’s relationship to only T-Mobile, among the top three U.S. mobile network operators (MNOs). These announcements indicated that open RAN is slowly but surely becoming mainstream.

The open RAN action started much before MWC this year. Verizon touted that it has deployed more than 130,000 open RAN compatible radios in February 2024. Before that, AT&T, which hasn’t been outspoken about its open RAN strategy, surprised the industry with a large single-vendor contract to Ericsson in December 2023. This contract upset the infrastructure market structure. Suddenly Ericsson, a laggard so far, became an overnight open RAN champion. Meanwhile the deal reduced Nokia’s relationship to only T-Mobile, among the top three U.S. mobile network operators (MNOs). These announcements indicated that open RAN is slowly but surely becoming mainstream.

Samsung’s continued operator traction

I have closely followed Samsung Networks’ journey from its disruptive international debut to carefully charted global expansion to its current leadership position, as documented in my ongoing article series.

In North America, Samsung currently has major 4G LTE, 5G legacy and open RAN deployments at Verizon, a legacy deployment at Telus and exclusive multi-vendor 5G open RAN deployment at Dish Network. Samsung supplied a majority of the aforementioned 130,000 open RAN compatible radios at Verizon. It further expanded its reach in the region by signing up to deploy Canada’s first open RAN network with Telus. This is noteworthy also because Samsung will provide comprehensive solutions, including the latest vRAN 3.0 for 4G/5G, open RAN compliant Massive MIMO radios (up to 64T64R), support for third-party radio integration, and AI-based Services Management and Orchestration (SMO) platform, a first for Samsung.

In Europe, Samsung has established a strong relationship with Vodafone since 2021. Last year, Samsung and Vodafone began a large-scale open RAN rollout across 2,500 sites in the U.K. At MWC, both companies announced that they are extending that further to deploy open RAN in 20 major cities in Romania. Samsung is rapidly expanding its footprint and becoming a critical player in the region.

Telecom: a game of partnerships

Telecom is a game of partnerships. It’s even more critical in open RAN, where the whole premise is to utilize various vendors’ different software and hardware components. During MWC, Samsung announced new partnerships and further strengthened existing ones.

The first was with AMD, where Samsung and Vodafone made the first end-to-end open RAN data call on AMD processors. The call was made with AMD EPYC 8004 series processors on Supermicro’s Telco/Edge servers, supported by Wind River Studio Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform.

Following that, Samsung announced the industry’s first end-to-end call in a lab environment with Intel’s next-gen Granite Rapids processors. Earlier this year, Samsung and AWS announced a data call using Samsung’s versatile vRAN software, Samsung’s vRAN accelerator card and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances powered by AWS Graviton processors.

As the debate rages on whether x86 or Arm processors are the best, or in-line or look-aside accelerators are most suitable for vRAN/open RAN, Samsung is not taking sides and is offering all the options, giving choice to operators. One might think offering all options is more expensive and resource-intensive. This is precisely where the financial strength of the larger Samsung conglomerate comes into the picture and makes Samsung Networks differentiate itself.

Let me explain. Global Infrastructure is a relatively new, strategic and growth business for the mothership. In today’s dynamic infrastructure market, marred by financial challenges and geopolitics, Samsung has the opportunity to prove itself as a significant, reliable global infrastructure player by leveraging its economic strength, technological prowess and international presence.

The additional cost to support all options is fully justified if that means more contract wins, market leadership and more significant influence in the market. That’s why I think, instead of being an arbitrator, offering choice is a brilliant move by the company.

Looking ahead – 5G SA Core network, RIC, 5G Advanced, 6G

Samsung Networks is known for its RAN and is a market leader in vRAN/open RAN. However, it also has the Core Network business that has been steadily growing and is now ready to change gears. The timing is impeccable, as the industry is slowly transitioning to the new cloud-native architecture and, more importantly, to standalone (SA) mode, creating opportunities for new vendor introduction.

Samsung already supplies its vCore to SK Telecom, KT, and LGU+ in South Korea. It recently went live with the nationwide commercial 5G SA Core Network for KDDI and deployed the virtual roaming gateway for TELUS.

With open RAN slowly becoming mainstream for many operators, the focus is now moving toward automation and other advanced capabilities this architecture offers. Many of those are realized through RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) and rApps. At MWC, Samsung highlighted its Non-Realtime RIC platform, its own rApps, as well as those of Viavi, Capgemini, ZinkWorks and others. RIC and rApps will soon be the new battleground for infrastructure players.

5G Advanced is the next phase of 5G with many exciting features, including AI. At MWC, Samsung discussed its chipsets for AI-based baseband and radios, as well as using AI for enhanced beamforming and uplink performance. It also showed mock-ups of advanced radios with next-gen Massive MIMO, supporting up to 256 TRX and 3072 antenna elements. The company indicated that these radios would support 6 GHz and 13 GHz bands, all gearing up for possible 5G Advanced and 6G deployments. Although technology discussions are starting now, there is still quite a bit of time for 6G.

In summary, MWC proved to be an excellent time for Samsung to showcase its progress and solidify its position as a top 5G infrastructure player.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Generative AI (Gen AI) can be a godsend tool for content creators. The creative possibilities are only limited by human imagination. But it is not without significant challenges. The concerns around copyright and licensing are already giving jitters to users, and the questions around the authenticity of the content are putting the believability of any content on the internet in peril.

However, some clear trends and best practices are emerging to tackle these challenges. Some forward-looking organizations, such as Adobe, have adopted them proactively and are leading the way.

Copyright/Licensing Challenges of Gen AI And The Menace Of Fake Imagery

Gen AI models require enormous amounts of data to train. This data includes pictures, videos, text, audio and other media. The Gen AI model is only as good as its training data. Currently, there is generally no mechanism to share or transparency around what inputs Gen AI models have used. That absence creates uncertainty regarding copyright or licensing risks. The ongoing court cases against Gen AI startups like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and Open AI as well as giants like Microsoft are likely only the beginning. As AI-generated content usage expands and awareness about the inputs increases, these challenges, if not addressed, could grow exponentially. The risks will be magnitudes greater for Gen AI models created by social media and other companies with access to vast depositories of public images and other data.

The uncertainty regarding legality could discourage Gen AI usage, especially for enterprises. They may face legal action, financial distress, operational disruptions, damage to their brands and more.

At the same time, we are also starting to see the menace of fake imagery. Currently, identifying fake imagery is painstaking manual work that requires experts. Even that is done after the imagery goes viral and the damage is done. This threat will likely also increase significantly as Gen AI tools become more advanced and easily accessible.

How To Mitigate Copyright And Licensing Risks

The most effective solution to manage copyright and licensing risks is to use clean inputs, i.e., use data to which you have complete rights for Gen AI model training. If you use third-party sources, maintain complete transparency about the source, what terms and conditions they have signed, and so on. For example, note whether they explicitly agreed to Gen AI use and whether the licensing for their content is without any restrictions (e.g., whether it is export-controlled).

Not many Gen AI companies can boast that they have full rights to their training data. The traditional content creators, aggregators or distributors have a distinct advantage here. A great example of such a model is Adobe’s Firefly, which Adobe claims is trained on its vast collection of licensed stock content (or public domain and openly licensed content). Getty Images also claims it uses its own creative content and data for its image generation service. I haven’t seen social media companies or other major enterprises claim that.

Another solution to mitigate the copyright and licensing risks is for Gen AI model companies to indemnify customers for any risks. This acts as an insurance policy that seems logical but is not without complexities. For example, indemnity likely can’t be unlimited because of financial reasons. So, users must be careful about the coverage limits, restrictions and exclusions.

Many Gen AI players, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Open AI, IBM, Adobe and others, have recently announced indemnification of varying degrees for their models. Many have one or more limitations with lots of fine print. Some have offered it proactively, and others retroactively. It seems Adobe is among the first to offer it proactively. Smaller players without deep pockets typically offer nothing.

So, then, the question boils down to this: Is either of the options—licensed inputs or indemnity—sufficient on its own, or do you need both? The first minimizes the risks, and the second provides peace of mind. But clearly, with so much at stake, both are needed. However, currently, very few players support both.

How To Fight Against Fake Imagery

There is a concerted effort in the industry to identify fake imagery. Even though many companies started working independently, they all seem to be aligning behind a common approach that involves embedding credentials into the content. This is akin to the nutrition label used for food products.

Two entities are currently working together to spearhead that effort. The first is a standards group called the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), with steering members including Adobe, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic. It develops the specifications. The second is a large industry forum, Content Authentication Initiative CAI, that implements those standards. Creators can easily incorporate the CAI implementations into their content.

As I discussed on Yahoo! Finance, both entities together have members across a broad spectrum of industries, including Adobe, Nikon, Canon, Sony, The New York Times, the Associated Press, the BBC, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Qualcomm, Intel, Microsoft and more. Recently, Google joined C2PA, and Meta announced that it will adopt C2PA standards to identify AI-generated content on its platforms.

In summary, the Gen AI revolution has started, but so have the challenges. Early trends and best practices are emerging to address and future-proof against those challenges. It is incumbent on the users, especially enterprises, to be aware of the pitfalls, make the right choices and be prepared for their Gen AI journey.

The information provided here is not legal advice and does not purport to be a substitute for advice of counsel on any specific matter. For legal advice, you should consult with an attorney concerning your specific situation.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

The millions of IoT devices we use knowingly or unknowingly make our modern societies function. These include utility meters, traffic lights, and they even connect to the national grid. 5G is elevating their use to even higher levels and making them an integral part of the country’s critical infrastructure.

But that also is making that infrastructure more vulnerable to security threats. Reps. Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi of the U.S. House Select Committee on China understand this threat and are rightly sounding alarm bells. It’s fascinating how these seemingly benign and almost invisible IoT devices can be such a grave threat.

IoT devices are an integral part of the national critical infrastructure

The U.S. IoT market is massive, estimated to be $199B in 2024, according to Statista. IoT technology is found in almost any connected device for individual or industrial use. Since IoT devices manage and control the country’s critical assets, including power, water, natural gas, and many industries, even more with 5G IoT, they are part of national critical infrastructure.

Imagine the havoc the sudden collapse of the national grid or large-scale disruption of utilities can create. Such catastrophes can bring the country to a screeching halt, threaten lives, and cause lasting damage.

Despite its critical role, IoT security hasn’t gotten the attention of regulators and governments it deserves. It was considered a “business risk” to be managed by the industry. Fortunately, that is starting to change. The recent letters from the congressmen to the FCC, the Department of Defense, and the Treasury Department regarding cellular connectivity modules used in IoT devices indicate that lawmakers are now treating this as a national security issue.

Vulnerabilities of IoT devices

When it comes to cellular IoT devices, the biggest threat is the security of the connectivity module (aka IoT module) on which they are built. This module is the gatekeeper, which controls all the data going in and out of the device. If the module is compromised, the whole device, and in many cases all the systems it connects to, are compromised.

Connectivity modules could have many vulnerabilities. There could be backdoors built into the hardware or the software when modules are shipped from the factory (called “Zero Day” attacks) or introduced during numerous upgrades modules receive during their more than ten years of lifespan. These upgrades are similar to the ones our smartphones receive but are usually automatically executed.

Because of prohibitive costs, operators can’t examine and verify all the devices and their firmware updates. No matter who and how these vulnerabilities are created, they can be exploited by bad actors. If those bad actors are state-sponsored, the risk is even higher.

As FBI Director Christopher Wray mentioned in his recent testimony, “Hackers are positioning on American infrastructure in preparation to wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities.”

The attackers can stay dormant for a long time and attack at a time of their choosing. Hence, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that any device with such vulnerabilities can become a ticking national security timebomb.

IoT security: A tragedy of commons

IoT is a largely low-margin, low-revenue (per subscription) business with a highly cost-competitive market. Most operators manage security as a business risk. They invest just enough to protect against fraud and liability. National security probably never makes it to their priority list.

Considering the complexity, cost, and potential risks involved, the responsibility of ensuring the security of IoT devices, from a national security perspective, rests squarely on the regulators and the government. The simple and highly reliable approach to achieve that seems to be establishing a fully trusted supply chain comprising local players and players from trusted national partners.

This is where things get complicated. According to Counterpoint Research, almost a quarter of the US cellular connectivity module is controlled by one Chinese company, Quectel. More alarmingly, a large portion of the IoT modules used in the cellular network used by first responders called FirstNet are also Chinese.

And that’s precisely why these congressmen are concerned and asking relevant US departments to intervene. As opined by many law experts, Chinese laws require all Chinese companies “to support, provide assistance, and cooperate in national intelligence work.”

So, then the question arises: Is the Huawei-like approach of totally banning these companies the right strategy? If not, are there any other remedies available? What are the pitfalls? All these questions need to be addressed before taking any substantive action. Look out for my next article for details on them and possible answers.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Apple’s Vision Pro is a creator’s dream come true. One can create their own world and be immersed in it.

There are many innovative tools that the Vision Pro supports, but Adobe’s Firefly, which gives the high-tech headset the power of generative AI (Gen AI), enables consumers to bring their imaginations to life.

Firefly is a text-to-image creator, popular across many platforms, including Apple Macs and iPads, now supported natively on Vision Pro.

Imagine wearing Vision Pro and wanting to adorn your room with creative art to set your mood. Simply open the Firefly app and indicate what image you want to create, either through a voice prompt or by typing on the virtual keyboard. Maybe you like abstract art, pictures of nature, or even a funny flying cat. Whatever you want, you can have within seconds, as Firefly creates images as unique as your imagination. It also generates four variations of the image to give you options.

Vision Pro and Adobe Firefly Gen AI let you create your own virtual space

You didn’t like what it created? No problem. Just give a new prompt. In no time, another set of four pictures will be ready.

Or, if you want to modify what was already created, go back to the prompt and say or type your tweaks. Perhaps you have a theme in mind; if so, utilize the many options in the Firefly app to make it happen. You can even combine elements of all the images you created, again, by returning to the prompt and letting Firefly and Vision Pro do the magic.

You get the point.

Plaster your wall with your virtual pictures

The images are very high resolution, meaning they can be used in various ways once created. You can make them as big or as small as you want, plastering the entire wall of your virtual room with the picture or making it a painting or photo on your desk. Because of Vision Pro’s pinch-based control, editing and moving is a breeze.

The images can also be shared with other apps in Vision Pro, with other devices, as well as with other people. For example, you can import the images into an attractive invite you are creating for your house party or college reunion, or send your flying cat picture to your friends using iMessage. They IN TURN can edit on their computer using apps like Photoshop on Vision Pro and send it back.

If you are photographically inclined, you could utilize pro tools like Adobe Lightroom and take advantage of the large life-like canvas and gesture-based controls of Vision Pro to edit and finetune the images. Since Lightroom is supported natively on Vision Pro, you can enjoy all your photos on a large scale and re-live your memories.  

What’s next for Firefly and Vision Pro?

In the future, Firefly could create 360-degree wrap-around panoramas and environments. That means you can transform your room or any surroundings into an exotic location of your choosing. For example, put on the Vision Pro and be visually transported to a beach, watching the sunrise in the morning or sunset in the evening. Virtually sit in a serene forest while you meditate in the middle of the day. Or sit on a Manhattan balcony enjoying the picturesque view while sipping your martini.

As an analyst, I also foresee being able to create 3D and video versions of these experiences in the future. Thanks to the exceptional processing capabilities of Vision Pro and the fact that most of the Firefly processing happens in the cloud, these will be software upgrades, propelling the experience and usability of Vision Pro even further. You’ll be able to initiate those actions with simple voice or text prompts. The possibilities are endless.

Are the images safe to use?

Adobe claims it only uses its own content and license-free images to train Firefly Gen AI models. That means the created images are free from any copyright or licensing issues. But more importantly, images will be marked as AI-generated to fight the menace of fake photos. They are embedded with content credentials similar to a “nutrition label” on food products. Check out my earlier article about this for more details.

So, be ready to create your own world and be immersed in it with Vision Pro and Adobe Firefly.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

ChatGPT going public was a watershed moment for AI. The feverish pitch of Gen AI is affecting every aspect of the technology sector. Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2024 was no different. Unlike previous events, where the new devices were the center of attraction, this event had “Samsung AI” as the hero. The newly announced S24 series was merely the first instance of the technology.  

Samsung proclaimed that these phones powered by AI, specifically its own “Galaxy AI,” will start a new era. But the question is whether the AI in phones is significant enough to trigger another smartphone upgrade cycle akin to 4G and 5G.

What is “Galaxy AI?”

Samsung AI is a set of user experiences enabled by AI. It includes regular or legacy AI and Gen AI functions and features of its own as well as its partners, such as Google.  

The Galaxy S24 series packs quite a few features that utilize AI. Many improve existing functionality, such as better picture/video capture and editing, while others create entirely new experiences, such as circle-to-search, live voice, and text translation.

Although Samsung mentioned “On-device AI” several times, they didn’t push it hard, as it is not all on-device. Also, not all is Gen AI either. For example, the circle-to-search runs entirely on the cloud and is not Gen AI. Live voice and text translations are a mix of cloud and on-device AI. Most camera and photo/video editing features are on-device. Galaxy S24 offers very granular settings for users to decide whether to share their data with the cloud. However, If they decline, many of the features that depend on the cloud will not work.

Note: To learn more about the advantages of on-device AI, please check these articles.

Many Galaxy AI applications and functions currently offered come directly from Samsung or Google. Samsung did talk about its ecosystem using many of the AI features. However, it was unclear how and to what extent third-party app developers would get access to Samsung AI. I assume that Samsung will offer app developers SDKs and APIs sooner or later. The app developer ecosystem is crucial to scale and make a difference.  

I am saying this was more a Galaxy AI event than the S24 launch because Samsung AI is not exclusive to the S24 series but will be available on select existing Galaxy. Most likely on Galaxy ZFold5, ZFlex5, and possibly S23.

SoC selection, build, display, and other improvements.

Unlike last year, when Qualcomm Snapdragon powered the entire Galaxy S23 line-up, the S24 will use both the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Exynos 2400 SoCs. The distribution between them is also different than in previous years. Instead of simply dividing them by regions, SoCs are also being used for tiering for the first time.

Snapdragon will be used for all models in the USA, China, Japan, and the highest-tier Galaxy S24 Ultra worldwide. Exynos will be used for S24 and S24+ globally, except for the region mentioned above. Historically, the need for CDMA support drove the decision to utilize Snapdragon SoC in certain areas. However, with that technology sun setting, I wonder what factors decided the distribution. Interestingly, Samsung Ai doesn’t seem to be using any of the components from the Qualcomm AI stack.

Because of the dual-sourcing, Qualcomm was also not mentioned during the Unpakced on-stage presentation. Additionally, although Snapdragon boats an impressive AI stack, there was no mention of it being part of Galaxy AI, neither in Samsung’s nor Qualcomm’s press releases.  

Following Apple’s lead, Samsung uses a titanium body for the S24 series and the latest Corning Gorilla Armor glass, which is claimed to be far better scratch and break-resistant. S24 Ultra’s display has an impressive 2500 nits max brightness, much higher than the Apple iPhone 15’s 2000 nits. This makes the S24 Ultra highly usable outdoors in bright sunlight.

One of the most significant announcements of the day was the decision to offer several years of security updates and seven generations of software upgrades. Samsung is following Google’s lead here and will pretty much make it the industry standard. Among all the commendable work Samsung is doing for sustainability, this step, in my view, has the highest impact.

As with any new flagship smartphone, there are incremental improvements in the camera system CPU, GPU, NPU performance, battery life, etc. There is still no satellite connectivity in Samsung phones. It is unclear whether it is waiting to incorporate standards-based NTN or rely on third-party solutions such as AST Space Mobile, which promises statellite connecity with unmodified smartphones. Notably, the latter has used Samsung devices for its demos and PoCs.

Tantra’s Take

At the very outset, it is commendable that Samsung is taking another bold step by becoming the first vendor to introduce Gen AI to smartphones. This continues its tradition of being first with innovations in this industry, be it new form factors like foldable, larger displays, integrated S-pen, etc.

The Samsung AI’s applications and functionality are impressive. However, they seem incremental and improve the existing functionality and experience. They also seem “good to have” and are infrequently used instead of daily drivers. For example, live translation is very impressive but only useful when traveling abroad or talking to somebody who doesn’t know your language. Something seldom happens, especially for Americans. Circle-to-search is handy, but it seems it mostly runs in the cloud and doesn’t require a lot of local AI processing. That means it could be run on older devices, too. Among all the Gen AI applications, camera improvements and photo editing seem to be the most impactful, benefiting almost every user.

So, now the question is whether these things are enough to entice users to buy new phones and start a new upgrade cycle. I think it is still in the early days for Gen AI. The ultimate benefit of on-device GenAI will be when third-party app developers introduce new, exciting use cases, applications, services, and experiences with mass appeal. Until that happens, I am skeptical about a new upgrade cycle starting.

Of course, the new capabilities will advance the purchase of users who are due and looking to upgrade their phones anyway. The excitement of new, shiny technology will entice some bleeding-edge customers to buy new phones. But most others will wait for the mass appeal experiences to be available.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

The telecom industry’s biggest show returned to its old glory with estimated 90,000 attendees. Also back were the expensive air tickets and hotels, long taxi lines, crowded metros and restaurants, and more. But it was all well worth for this yearly pilgrimage every serious telecom industry participant has to make.
In my view, no dominant theme came out of the show floor or the meetings I had, but many vital topics. That aligned with the organizer GSMA’s nondescript theme, “Velocity.” That was to suggest faster innovation, technology development, and everything else, in a way symbolizing the pace with which 5G has proliferated. According to GSA, in a short span, 5G has been launched in 95 countries worldwide, the fastest among all generations of cellular technologies.
The primary discussion topics included vRAN / Open RAN, Private Networks, reformed Metaverse, reformed IoT, foldables and rollables, satellite connectivity for smartphones, and others. Let’s look at each of them in some detail:

▸vRAN / Open RAN

This was a common topic across almost every exhibitor at the show. Thankfully, it was not the hype we had seen before, but more substance and tangible progress. There were numerous announcements from many companies, too long to list all here. The progress at Dish Wireless (greenfield) and Vodafone (Brownfield), and to some extent Verizon, reflects the current situation. Dish and Samsung touted their deployment plans. Vodafone has made a few announcements that it uses both Samsung and Nokia. Ericsson was pointing to its announcement with Verizon a few months ago.

One of the discussion points within vRAN / Open RAN was around the optimal compute architecture, especially for Layer-1. The best option, in my view, is using a dedicated optimized accelerator instead of generic compute (CPU). Marvell Technology announced its Octeon10 Fusion processor for such accelerators (with my quote in it!), Nokia showed a card based on it. Qualcomm had a demo of the power savings achieved through their accelerator card. Ericsson and Intel believe a CPU with a built-in accelerator is good enough. I will discuss this topic on my Tantra’s Mantra podcast soon.

Note: For more information, please check out my Fierce Wireless article about the best compute architecture for vRAN / Open RAN.

▸Private Networks

The most significant endorsement of the importance of Private Networks came from Nokia. It changed its logo to reflect its focus on the enterprise (and public) networks market, shunning the older consumer brand image.

There was no hype but much talk about products and deployment plans. There were a few announcements. But more importantly, almost everybody I talked to had a solid commercialization plan for 2023 or 2024.

Two interesting demos I saw were at Verizon and HTC booths. Verizon is building a dedicated network in NFL stadiums for coach-to-coach communications, which can also extend to the coach-to-players system. This represents an excellent case where high quality, reliable, secure, and a dedicated network for an enterprise like NHL that has the capital to invest. I will discuss the HTC demo in the next section. There were a few factory automation and industrial network demos as well. But most were repeats of previous years.

▸Reformed Metaverse (aka XR/VR/AR)

This year’s most noticeable change was companies trying to disassociate themselves from the Metaverse phrase and call it by its previous name—XR/VR/AR. Every booth had a customary XR/VR/AR section with similar applications and use cases we have seen and heard for a long time. Some realistic ones, such as gaming, Enterprise use cases (training, collaboration, etc.), were pretty good. In my view, these have the potential to be real businesses. The interesting demo was one at the HTC booth.

HTC showed a live XR Private Network-in-a-box. Its size is slightly bigger than a pizza box, with the collapsed Core Network and RAN built into it. All you need is to install Radio Units (RU) where need, connect them to the box, bring backend connectivity, and you are ready to go. The box supports 7.2 split of Open RAN with built-in XR optimizations. If you are an enterprise trying to build a private network for, say, your employee training center based on XR, you just install this setup and are ready to go, instead of working across many vendors. I will also have a Tantra’s Mantra podcast episode on this soon. 

▸Reformed IoT

IoT has been the staple of MWC for a long time. Over the years, I have seen numerous announcements and demos from almost everybody in the industry. But this year, instead of discussing concept demos, many discussions were about specific use cases for particular segments. Interestingly instead of clubbing all of them under the IoT umbrella, exhibitors named them smart agriculture, smart cities, smart this, and smart that. Despite much talk, cellular IoT still remains niche and growth challenging.

The hottest topic in IoT this year was Application Programmable Interfaces (API). This is to give the developer community open and easy access to the cellular Network. Notable announcements were GSMA Open Gateway, a universal network API framework that operators worldwide can adopt, and Qualcomm Aware, a cloud  API to access Qualcomm’s cellular IoT platforms.

There were also Red Cap (Reduced Capability in Rel. 17, aka NR-Light) announcements from Qualcomm and MediaTek in the lead-up to MWC, but no significant demos or talk at the show. Ericsson had a demo with low-latency gaming. There were lots of smaller companies showing IoT devices and demos. But nothing new or eye-popping.

▸Satellite connectivity for smartphones

Even since Apple’s announcement last year, satellite connectivity support of smartphones has become a hot topic. Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon Satellite at CES and talked it up at the show. However, the announcement of British ruggedized gear maker Bullitt Group’s live demo of the Motorola Defy 2 smartphone (and a clip-on puck) with satellite connectivity stole the show and even bagged the GSMA award. Unlike Apple and Qualcomm, they use MediaTek’s world’s first 3GPP 5G IoT-NTN standard-based MT6825 chipset.

Ericsson and Qualcomm showed 5G NR-NTN simulated demo at the former’s booth. MediaTek had a similar demo at their booth too. Both showed video calls on a satellite link. Many other booths had at least some sort of display about 5G NTN connectivity.

▸Foldables and Rollables

Being a cellular show, MWC always had large booths of many phone vendors displaying their latest and greatest devices. This year was no different. There were sizable booths of Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Honor (smartphone spinoff from Huawei), and others. Almost all of them had foldables. The most notable feature touted by all of them was the absence of the infamous “gap” on the folding side on current phones (e.g., Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip). Oppo Find N2 Flip and Honor Magic VS all touted this absence of gap, foretelling the trend for this year.

Note: For details, please check out my reviews of Galaxy Z Fold4 and Z Flip 4.

Motorola Mobility finally displayed its much-awaited rollable phone and laptops. Both have extendable displays that roll up (unfold) when needed to make the screen bigger and roll down (fold) when not needed. As one of the Motorola product managers I spoke to at the booth agreed, this is still at a concept stage, and the use cases are yet to be worked out. The use case for a rollable display laptop is pretty compelling, but I’m not sure about the smartphone. Also, the devices at the booths were for display only and were not allowed to be handled by visitors. That showed that the technology is not yet robust enough to go commercial.

Samsung’s Display business had a sizable booth showing concepts of future foldable devices. It had devices with multiple folds and extendable displays. The most interesting for me was a display cum laptop device. This can become a 20-inch display when fully unfolded or a laptop when folded in half, where the bottom half becomes the touch-screen keyboard and mouse pad. I think that form factor has considerable potential, especially for road warriors like me who miss large desktop displays of our home/office setup when traveling.

▸Other topics and misses

There were many other topics with considerable interest from the ecosystem. They included Fixed Wireless Access, the hottest new revenue-generating service for operators, network power saving (Intel Xeon scalable demo), AI, WiFi7, and others.

Many times you find most interesting things in the booths of startups and smaller players. I found a couple of gems this year. First was the smart RU and testing solutions at Lite Point’s booth and the other was r/xApps demo of Aira technologies in VMWare’s booth.

There were a few misses as well. With the popularity of ChatGPT, I was expecting a louder buzz and more demos. But the only one I found interesting was Qualcomm’s demo of porting Stable Diffusion on a smartphone. I also didn’t hear or see much of Mobile Edge Cloud (MWC), which was a major miss considering how much interest there is around the topic. I also expected much vocal and visible discussion around 5G Advanced, knowing that standardization of Rel, 18 is fully underway. Huawei and ZTE had some demos, but all others mainly had slideware. That is understandable, as 5G operators are still grappling with the question of monetizing their current network investments before putting in more.

One memorable moment I had this year was the opportunity to attend the celebration of 50 years of making the first cellular phone call. GSMA commemorated this special occasion by honoring Marty Copper, the founder of the cellphone. In a way, he is the very reason for the existence of this show.

Wrapping up

Overall, I found this year’s event to be more grounded in reality than the hype of one thing or another that you usually see. The discussions and demos gave a peek into the products and services we will see this and the next year. I think whoever made the pilgrimage to Barcelona felt they got the worth for their money—lots of information and trends they can take back home and try to strategize their businesses around them. It will be interesting to see how those will materialize this year and what new things will spring up during next year’s show.  

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Samsung returned to in-person unpacked this month after more than two years. Its highlight was the launch of Galaxy S23 smartphones and Galaxy Book3 laptops. There was also a pre-launch event for select media and analysts, where Samsung’s executives discussed their commitment to sustainability.

▸Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra

The Galaxy S series, led by its Ultra variant, is famous for its camera. S23 extends that legacy further with lots of camera advancements. Those include 200MP Adaptive Pixel sensor, improvements in Nightography mode, Super HDR selfie camera, better optical image stabilizer, noise-free low light performance, lots of AI-based enhancements, and more. The Expert RAW support is now extended to S23 and S23+.

S23 Ultra also offers a superior gaming experience, with a better GPU, advanced features such as real-time ray tracing, and more, thanks to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8, Gen-2 for Galaxy SoC.

▸Galaxy Book3 360, 360 Pro, and Ultra

Galaxy Book3s are the latest Samsung flagship laptops. Galaxy Book3 Pro is a sleek and light workhorse, Book3 Pro 360 is a 2-in-1 with a touchscreen display, and Book3 Utlra is the ultimate creativity and gaming laptop. Ultra has 13^th Gen Intel® Core i9 processor, NVIDIA® RTX Geforce 4070 laptop GPU, and a Dynamic AMOLED 2X Display (first time in a laptop), with 3K (2880×1800) resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate. All these should make Ultra a perfect fit for the creativity segment currently dominated by Apple. It can also be a strong competitor to today’s gaming laptops, such as Dell Alienware, Acer Predator, and MSI.

▸Seamless Samsung Galaxy Connected Experience

I think Samsung Galaxy Connected Experience can potentially have a far-reaching impact on the Samsung ecosystem. It is a set of features that make Galaxy devices work seamlessly together, providing an improved user experience. Here are some of the features: “Link to Windows/Microsoft Phone Link,” introduced last year, offers connectivity between Galaxy Book3 and Galaxy phones; “Samsung Multi-Control” allows Galaxy Book3 to control Galaxy phone and Galaxy Tab and seamlessly move files between them; “Second Screen” converts Galaxy Tab into a second screen; “Quick Share” on S23 automatically finds nearby Galaxy devices for seamless photo and video sharing. All of these work using the Wi-Fi Direct protocol.

There is also the ability to sync all devices through a single Samsung account sign-on. And finally, the Galaxy Book Switch allows easy migration of data and accounts from any windows PC/laptop to Galaxy Book3, similar to the Samsung Switch used in smartphones.

▸Sustainability

Interestingly, sustainability was a major theme at both pre-launch and launch events. The former had two panels with Samsung’s head of R&D Won-Joon Choi, sustainability executives Inhee Chung and Mark Newton, joining United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) representative, and two young icons of global sustainability efforts.

The discussion highlighted Samsung’s various sustainability efforts and specifics on S23, which uses recycled aluminum and glass, recycled plastics sourced from discarded fishing nets, water barrels, and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. All of S23’s packaging is made with 100% recycled paper.

Samsung executives also discussed its phone reuse program, where old phones are refurbished and sent to economically challenged regions.

 

Tantra’s take:

The Galaxy S23 series has a great camera and excellent performance. However, not sure whether the improvements leap is big enough to entice S22 owners to upgrade. But it looks very attractive for users of previous generations. Galaxy Book3 series has significant upgrades, and Book3 Ultra will make heads turn and could be a game changer. I will have more to say about both in my upcoming reviews.

Galaxy Connected Experience is the first time that Samsung is trying to leverage its vast ecosystem to provide a differentiated experience. I have been advocating this for a long time. This is a good start and has significant future potential if extended to Samsung’s entire portfolio, including TVs, refrigerators, media players, IoT devices, and others.

I strongly suggest that Samsung develop a proprietary mid-layer protocol that it can integrate into all its products. That will enable smooth, automatic device discovery, seamless connectivity, and easy device management, especially for headless IoT devices. Such an ecosystem of devices connected with a common protocol can enable numerous new experiences that only Samsung can provide. This approach will create high desirability and stickiness for Samsung products and guarantee replacement business.

On sustainability, smartphone companies can have on highest impact if they extend device life. Samsung deserves recognition for offering the most robust software support among Android OEMs (five years of OS and four years of security upgrades). Most smartphones start to slow down after two years, especially burdened by increasingly heavy OS upgrades. Samsung and Google providers could work together and design upgrades that do not overburden the old SoCs and do not slow them down. Samsung’s R&D chief mentioned they are working on something on those likes.

The S23 launch was notable for Qualcomm. Unlike previous years, it scored a 100% share of S23 SoCs. Maybe to return the favor, it has offered a somewhat optimized version (higher clock speeds) of its flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC for S23. Who knows, this could be the start of a new trend. 

It was surprising to see S23 was missing the hot satellite connectivity feature. This is a miss at many levels. First, Samsung is always the first to introduce new features, far ahead of Apple. Second, Qualcomm announced its satellite connectivity service for Snapdragon 8 Gen2, expected to be available later in 2023. Samsung just needed to include a couple of RF components required to support this feature in S23, so it could enable it when Qualcomm launched its service. It is unclear whether S23 has those components. If not, S23 will have a significant handicap against other phones. I contacted both Samsung and Qualcomm on this but did not get any confirmation.

There was also some strange on-stage show of support for XR by Samsung’s Mobile chief TM Roh, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, and Android chief Hiroshi Lockheimer. I didn’t quite get what they were trying to communicate—perhaps forming a unified front to keep the interest in XR alive, as the public confidence in XR and Metaverse has significantly eroded in the last few months.

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.

Marvell Technologies held its yearly industry analyst day on Dec 6^th, 2022, at its headquarters in Santa Clara, California. The overwhelming message from the event was how its relentless focus on the Data Infrastructure market across mainly four segments— Data Center, Carrier Infrastructure, Automotive, and Enterprise Networking—is paying off.  

All the speakers, including the COO, President, CTO, Chief Development Officer, all the business heads, and the breakout session leads, drove this message home with good proof points. Many guest speakers from present there physically or through videos endorsed Marvell’s technology and the collaboration between the companies.

Here are some of the key points from the presentations:

Data Infrastructure company

• 88% of Q3 FY22 revenues from data infrastructure business (12% from the consumer)

• Serving the majority of the top customers in all the four target segments

• Revenue doubling between 2021 and 2023e (~$3B to ~$6B)

Silicon Strategy

• Technology leadership and platform approach – compute + packaging + interconnect

• Changed from fast follower to technology leader (E.g., 5nm and 3nm nodes)

• Product leadership – compute, electro-optics, networking, security, storage

• Flexible business model – merchant, custom, hybrid

Data Processing Unit (DPU)

• Advantages of CPU-centric (E.g., Intel) vs. power optimized compute+ specialized accelerators + interconnects

• Industry’s first 5nm DPU, shipping across segments

• Strong endorsement from Nokia and Vodafone

Switching, PHY & Optical Interconnects

• Teralynx switching architecture leadership

• Interconnect speeds in data centers are increasing rapidly (up to 1.6 Tbps)

• Enabler for distributed data centers

• Leadership in PHY (10G, 200G, 400G, 800G, 5nm onboard 1.6T)

• Complete data center networking platform

• Endorsement from Ruckus Networks / CommScope

Storage and Memory

• Leading in HDD/SSD controllers

• Growth sectors – preamp, accelerators, & CXL solutions

• Endorsements from Microsoft, Micron, and Toshiba

Automotive

• Zonal architecture replacing point-to-point connection, domain consolidation

• Strong Ethernet adoption

• Automotive semiconductor content is increasing (Up to $125 per car)

Custom Silicon Business

• > 25% of SAM

• Leveraging all of Marvell’s technologies

• Unique business model, unmatched in the industry

Challenge of AI training platforms

• AI to surpass human intelligence in 2045

• Scalable, fully disaggregated data center, enabled by integrated optically connected computing, is the only solution

• Marvell best positioned for this future

Tantra’s take:

Although there were no announcements, the event gave a good overview of Marvell’s breadth of technology, range of products, and overarching strategy. Marvell’s portfolio might look like a disparate collection of products and technologies. But, the executives spun a nice cohesive story connecting the dots to position Marvell as a key enabler for the data infrastructure market across many segments. Among those, two are particularly interesting to me—Carrier Infrastructure and Automotive. I am also intrigued by their custom silicon business.

Marvell’s Carrier Infrastructure business is primarily driven by custom silicon. It supplies all major legacy vendors, including Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, and ZTE. That domain expertise is helping them in the new 5G cloud-native, virtual / Open RAN space. They have two publicly announced partnerships with the leading 5G infra providers—Nokia and Samsung.

Marvell’s collaboration with Nokia seems to be pretty deep. Marvell helped Nokia when its in-house SoC efforts were delayed and failing. That relationship appears to have further developed and blossomed, resulting in the recent announcement of the latest SharkReef chipset portfolio, based on Marvell’s Octeon 10 5nm platform. The Nokia representative’s presence at the event and the talk about their strategic relationship with Marvell are noteworthy. This partnership should help Marvell in Europe and US, where Nokia has a solid presence despite some headwinds at Verizon. 

The relationship with Samsung seems to be progressing well too. Both companies, along with Vodafone, announced the collaboration for developing Open RAN systems in the UK and beyond. Partnership with Vodafone is crucial because it is at the forefront of Open RAN commercialization. However, it is not yet a ticket to success, as Vodafone is working with almost every Open RAN solution provider, including Marvell’s competitors, Intel and Qualcomm. In spite of developing solutions for many of its products, it is noteworthy that Samsung relies on Marvell to co-develop key RAN technologies like massive MIMO. This clearly shows the technical and product prowess of Marvell. This collaboration will be key to Marvell’s continued success in the telecom space as Samsung has the most robust financial position among all non-Chinese vendors and has been considerably gaining share in the US and Europe.

There hasn’t been much news about Marvell’s Chinese infrastructure customers, Huawei and ZTE. It’s unclear how the recent US Government sanctions on Huawei and other Chinese companies have affected those relationships.

In terms of products, the key differentiator for Marvell is its inline accelerators and transport solutions. During the event, Marvell reemphasized the importance of its inline, power-efficient RAN accelerators, compared to general-purpose CPUs or FPGAs, mocking Intel’s CPU approach. You can read more about this in my articles in Forbes and other publications.

Another critical factor that will help Marvell in the vRAN/Open RAN market is its close relationship with Hyperscalers and cloud players, who play an increasingly more prominent role in 5G networks.

Regarding the Automotive market, most of Marvell’s talk has been about ethernet solutions, including switching and PHY. However, I think its power-efficient Octeon processors can be an excellent fit for In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI), autonomous driving, and other systems. A couple of trends can help Marvell in that pursuit. The first is ongoing “Domain Consolidation,” replacing 10s of microcontrollers in today’s cars with beefy SoCs. This perfectly suits Marvell’s products and strategy.

Note: Check out Tantra’s Mantra podcast Episode #12 to know more about “Domain Consolidation” in the automotive industry.

Second, Marvell’s AI expertise and collaboration with hyperscalers could be a significant asset in autonomous driving. Thirdly, its custom silicon business model is a perfect fit for the major auto OEMs who like to be involved in system development and offer their customers a unique, differentiated experience. Marvell already has a relationship with many of these OEMs through the ethernet business. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear more about this in the near future.

Closing thoughts:

At the event, Marvell painted an impressive picture of its story of being a leading data infrastructure player across key market segments. It seems to have the right products and partnerships in the two key industry segments I closely follow—Carrier Infrastructure and Automotive. In the Carrier Infrastructure space, its increasing collaboration with Nokia and Samsung bodes well for the future. In the Automotive market, it has the right technology/products, market conditions, and business model to expand further.

Taiwanese tech giant MediaTek held its yearly executive summit last week in California. It had a bunch of exciting announcements and a set of executive presentations. The most interesting announcement was that of Dimensity 9200, the smartphone SoC, which signaled the arrival of MediaTek in the 5G premium segment. The executive speeches demonstrated MediaTek’s growing confidence in projecting its technology leadership and substantial share in the markets they play.

Announcements:

Dimensity 9200 SoC – This chipset offers a slew of advanced technologies, including the AI Processing Unit with impressive power savings, the world’s first Arm Immortalis-G715 GPU, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, AI-enhanced modem supporting mmWave and Sub 6GHz bands, WiFi7 connectivity, and more. It is fabed using TSMC’s latest 4nm Gen 2 process. You can check out its press release and specifications for more details.

T800 Thin modem – This connectivity chipset offers 7.9 Gbps peak speeds, supports both mmWave and Sub-6GHz, 3GPP Re. 16,  4x carrier aggregation, and other advanced features. It targets Industrial IoT, M2M, always-connected PCs, and other markets beyond smartphones. You can check out its press release and specifications for more details.

Kompanio 520 and Kompanio 528 – These are chipsets supporting entry-level Chromebooks. You can check out their press release for more details.

Pentonic 1000 – This chipset is for the latest smart TVs and media players. You can check out its press release for more details.

Tantra’s take:

Dimensity 9200 is a full-featured premium SoC by any standards. This chipset will be a beast if it performs as claimed in the specs. With that performance and their excellent relationship with Chinese OEMs, MediaTek may finally have a chance of breaking out of the “mid-tier leader” mold and piercing the premium tier.

As expected, the phones with 9200 will start rolling out in China in early 2023, followed by Europe, Latin America, and India. The most interesting market will be the European premium segment, where Chinese OEMs, such as Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo, fiercely compete with Samsung. The critical question is whether and how many flagship models based on 9200 these OEMs will field there.  

When I asked about the US market, MediaTek’s executives squarely prioritized consolidating and expanding their recent considerable share gain in the mid-tier over premium. Mid-tier has become a happy hunting ground for MediaTek in the US. As you may recall, IDC reported that MediaTek became the Android market share leader in the US in Q4 2021. It also reached the significant milestone of offering its first 5G phone with mmWave support, Motorola Edge 2022. Allegedly Qualcomm was less focused on this segment because of the chip supply shortage. But with smartphone demand slowing, there might be a stiff fight ahead. 

MediaTek’s strategy of focusing on mid-tier now makes sense, as the only premium Android OEM in the region, Samsung, is committed to using Qualcomm SoC for the next couple of years. MediaTek’s VP Eric Fisher did talk about their ambition to enter the US premium segment, but that is still some ways away.

Another interesting announcement was T800 thin modem. MediaTek emphasized that the chipset was for the 5G IoT market. But its feature set makes it a viable choice for smartphone OEMs using thin modems, such as Apple and Google. I will keep an eye on any developments in that area.

The newly announced Chromebook chipsets give OEMs more options, further allowing MediaTek to consolidate its current dominant market position. Similarly, the latest Smart TV solution should cement its leadership in the TV and media player space.

Closing comments:

Apart from product announcements, a couple of other things stood out for me at the summit. MediaTek’s confidence in projecting its technology and market leadership was the first and most significant. The CEO, Rick Tsai, explained how they markedly changed their strategy from fast follower to technology leader in the last few years. For example, they decided to be on the leading edge of process nodes and forged a close relationship with TSMC to be among the first to get to access the latest 4nm node. They also focused on being among the first with advanced technologies such as WiFi7, hardware-based ray tracing, and others. All these marks their arrival as a strong contender on the 5G premium smartphone scene.

Another vital aspect was showcasing their diversified portfolio—smartphones represent only 55% of the overall business. The remaining comes from Compute, FWA CPE, IoT, WiFi, media, and other offerings. Additionally, in those segments, they have not only significant market share but also strong partnerships. For example, they collaborate with all major OEMs in the Chromebook market, work with Intel for 5GPCs, partner with Amazon for media players, and have strong traction with Verizon, T-Mobile, KDDI, BT, Telefonica for CPEs, etc.

In summary, MediaTek gave a compelling story to show how the strong product line-up and relationships give them a lot of confidence going into 2023. It will be interesting to see how the year unfolds, especially when all indications are that it might turn out challenging for the tech sector.

 

Prakash Sangam is the founder and principal at Tantra Analyst, a leading boutique research and advisory firm. He is a recognized expert in 5G, Wi-Fi, AI, Cloud and IoT. To read articles like this and get an up-to-date analysis of the latest mobile and tech industry news, sign-up for our monthly newsletter at TantraAnalyst.com/Newsletter, or listen to our Tantra’s Mantra podcast.