IFA 2025: an AI-first show with five other defining themes

This edition of the Industry Checkpoint series focuses on consumer devices, highlighting how the market has changed in the last six months and its implications. The report considers four major developments: innovation expanding beyond smartphones to wearables and the smart home; smart glasses seeing a revival; chipmakers intensifying efforts with generative AI; and direct-to-device strategies increasingly becoming a regional play.

There is a wave of innovation across consumer devices, connectivity and digital services. Within digital services, three areas are capturing growing interest: digital gaming; generative AI; and extended reality (XR) and the metaverse. In this report we draw upon findings from our consumer survey to uncover insights that can help players in these ecosystems sharpen their competitive strategies and refine their commercial offerings.

Many AI announcements in Q1 2026 focused on telecoms operators and partners building out sovereign capabilities to satisfy national requirements around data residency, compute and LLMs. Meanwhile, investment in agentic AI build-outs has extended beyond networks and software to machines, drones, cars and other industrial assets – so-called ‘physical AI’. As well as recent developments from the telco AI space and the Telco AI tracker, this edition provides a deep dive on the implications of the growth of on-device AI.