Technology Analyst and co-founder of 650 Group
Mobile World Congress 2026 crystallized the AI-RAN strategic split. Nokia and Samsung are betting on merchant silicon (CPUs and/or GPUs), while Ericsson, Huawei, and ZTE continue relying on purpose-built ASICs. The merchant camp believes general-purpose chips are now powerful and available enough to run real-time RAN functions plus AI workloads… Read More »MWC 2026: The RAN Chip Wars – Merchant vs ASIC Strategies
Having just returned from MWC 26 in Barcelona, I stopped by the Arrcus booth and learned about the Arrcus Inference Network Fabric (AINF) that the company announced right before the show. The company describes AINF as the first AI Inference Network Fabric. It is positioned as a carrier-grade, 5G-ready fabric… Read More »Arrcus Highlights its AI-Focused AINF at MWC 26
I attended the upbeat Fortinet Accelerate 2026 in Las Vegas on Tuesday. As part of the show, the company made two key announcements: FortiOS 8.0 and FortiSOC. Fortinet introduced FortiOS 8.0, which expands the Security Fabric with Secure AI Controls for visibility into shadow AI and AI-aware application controls, Fabric-Based… Read More »Fortinet Accelerate 26 Event Highlights AI Readiness
Yesterday, news came out that two Elon Musk-led companies, SpaceX and xAI were merging. We conduct research across many aspects of the now-combined company and believe the combination makes it much more likely that the xAI part will receive continued, robust funding to build numerous data centers in the future.… Read More »SpaceX Acquisition of xAI Drives AI Capex
We attended the Marvell Industry Analyst Day in Santa Clara, California today. The company focused almost exclusively on the Data Center market opportunities the company is pursuing. Numerous spokespersons said that it thinks it has enough manufacturing capacity to hit its 2026 plans and it is working with customers and its suppliers… Read More »Marvell’s CPO Story Unfolds at its Industry Analyst Meeting
We attended Extreme Networks’ Investor and Analyst Day at NASDAQ’s New York City facilities earlier this week. The company was decidedly upbeat and emphasized that it has an opportunity to pursue customers currently served by its competitors. The company reiterated that its Extreme Platform ONE (its cloud and AI management… Read More »Extreme Networks Holds Upbeat Investor and Analyst Day
This week at NVIDIA’s GTC show in Washington, D.C., NVIDIA and Nokia announced that NVIDIA will invest $1 billion in Nokia to jointly pursue the goal of developing AI-RAN systems in the future. Based on the companies’ formal announcement and a call hosted by Nokia earlier this week, we understand that Nokia… Read More »NVIDIA Invests $1B In Nokia to Influence AI-RAN
We attended an analyst meeting held in Fortinet’s headquarters and Executive Briefing Center (EBC) this week. Over ten different executives presented to the small audience about product, marketing and go-to-market activities at the cybersecurity leader. We left with the sense that SASE is the company’s key growth engine and that… Read More »Fortinet Analyst Meeting – Celebrating 25 Years
We attended the ZTE User Conference and Analyst Meeting in Milan, Italy, this week. The company is celebrating its 40th anniversary. On the first day, many customers presented and shared various insights about their operations; the operators’ insights primarily related to AI, 6G, and European mobile over-competition. On the second… Read More »ZTE User Conference in Milan: AI and 6G at the Forefront
We attended the 5G Americas conference this week and came away with few themes we felt were impactful: NTN, more spectrum lobbying, 6G, environmental sensing, and Sliced Services. We think the most important of these themes is Satellite NTN/D2C as it has the greatest potential to disrupt the mobile market… Read More »Top 5G Americas Wireless Operator Event Themes included Satellite and 6G
