AI ethics, tech regulation and the rising currency of trust

At IFA Berlin 2026, AI remained the dominant theme, as it becomes increasingly embedded across consumer electronics experiences. Beyond AI, robotics stood out, with the show hosting a ‘Robots on the Runway’ spectacle. For players across the consumer tech ecosystem, the themes highlighted at IFA continue to spur opportunities such as monetisation but also challenges, including costs and privacy issues.

Growth in AI consumption is creating commercial opportunities across the AI value chain. Over the past year, investment in AI has increasingly extended towards revenue-generating services and enterprise propositions, with operators assuming a broader range of roles across the AI value chain. Telcos in Asia Pacific are particularly active across multiple layers of the AI value chain. They account for 43% of those participating in the infrastructure layer and 38% in the model layer. This position reflects the combination of large and linguistically diverse markets, government-backed national and sovereign AI agendas, expanding AI infrastructure investment, and the scale of leading regional operators and technology ecosystems.

Digital trust has become a strategic delivery mechanism for building digital nations. Countries that build confidence in digital infrastructure, services and institutions will be better placed to convert digitalisation into adoption, innovation, investment and socioeconomic impact. To explain how digital trust can be strengthened, this report introduces four interconnected foundations of digital trust. Traditionally viewed as connectivity providers, mobile operators are increasingly contributing to all four trust foundations, making them key enablers of digital trust.