Global Mobile Radar - September 2018

This edition of the Global Mobile Radar comes as we look forward to Mobile World Congress Americas 2018. Hosted in Los Angeles for the first time, industry leaders from across the mobile ecosystem will gather to network, showcase and exchange ideas for the successful digital transformation of the industry. 

In this edition we look at the following:

Highly intelligent, autonomous machines that can physically resemble humans have been a mainstay of science fiction for many decades. However, the truth is that most robots today are in fact relatively dumb and limited to performing a small number of pre-programmed tasks. We examine how connectivity, AI, big data and machine learning are ushering in a third age of cloud robotics and the role that mobile technologies play as a key enabler in the emerging cloud robotics ecosystem.

 AI has become a national strategic asset and we are on the verge of an AI arms race, with China and the US the primary competitors. In contrast to many previous technology cycles, we are seeing the prospect of a zero-sum development scenario. We examine the consequences of the newly drawn battle lines on international trade, and an overall risk of innovation going into reverse gear.

Over the past 20 years, the notion of an empowered customer has changed from one that was simply well informed to one taking an active and contributing role within an economic ecosystem. We look at these ‘prosumers’ in a number of different industries and study the implications for brands.

In our final in-graphics chapter, we look at the development of battery technology. We outline private and government financing of innovation and technology development in rechargeable batteries, and close by looking at some of the latest alternatives to the dominant lithium-ion technology.