A survey of 645 B2B buyers found that B2B buyers are increasingly using a mix of digital channels, AI and human interactions throughout the purchase process. Buyers reported using an average of seven information sources during a recent purchase, and 45% said they used GenAI, primarily to gather information on vendors and products.

“B2B buyers are more comfortable using digital channels and GenAI to navigate the purchase process on their own, but that does not eliminate the role of the seller,” said Robert Blaisdell, VP Analyst, Chief of Research in the Gartner Sales practice. “Buyers still turn to sales reps to validate AI-generated insights, and support decision-making at critical moments in the journey.”

Latest research from Omdia shows the Middle East smartphone market (excluding Turkey) declined 6% year-over-year (YoY) to 11 million units in 1Q26 despite significant inventory frontloading ahead of Ramadan and new launches across the region. However, weaker retail sell-through and cautious consumer sentiment continued to weigh on replacement demand. At the same time, persistent global memory cost inflation pushed smartphone prices higher across both new and existing portfolios, limiting promotional intensity. Rising geopolitical tensions toward the end of the quarter further disrupted regional supply-chain activity and added pressure on consumer confidence across the region.

Analysts and investigators are expected to process growing volumes of information, adopt new technologies, and respond to increasingly complex threats, often while operating with limited resources and smaller teams. During a recent BizTechReports executive vidcast, Nadia Tuominen, Community Champion at i2 Group, discussed why intelligence organizations are placing greater emphasis on collaboration, knowledge sharing, and practitioner communities as a way to address these challenges.

China isn’t waiting. As the global AI industry shifts from infrastructure build-out to enterprise application at scale, China is already running — and the gap with most other markets is widening. That was the signal at IDC Directions 2026 in Beijing, where more than 400 technology decision-makers, analysts, and investors gathered to take stock of a market moving faster than almost anywhere else on earth. The event opened with a moment that said more than any data point could: IDC CEO Lorenzo Larini sharing a stage with an AI-powered robot built in China, deployed in China, and already competing globally.

Intelligence organizations are expanding collaboration across agencies, sectors, and professional disciplines as increasingly sophisticated threats expose the limits of traditional approaches to intelligence analysis, training, and information sharing. During a recent BizTechReports executive vidcast interview, Nadia Tuominen, Community Champion at i2 Group, said these converging pressures are creating new incentives for intelligence professionals to learn from one another and share knowledge across traditional organizational boundaries.

Inkjet printing (IJP) can reduce OLED notebook panel manufacturing costs by approximately 30 to 35% compared to conventional fine metal mask (FMM) OLEDs, according to the latest display industry research from Omdia. As a manufacturing approach, IJP provides many advantages over conventional technologies. For organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, IJP provides advantages in red, green, and blue (RGB) subpixel patterning, including greater material utilization, flexibility, panelization, and larger pixel apertures. At the same time, equipment and maintenance costs are lower than those required by FMM processes.

The American workforce is undergoing one of the most significant structural shifts in a generation as the traditional employment social contract itself transforms. Layoffs and restructuring driven by artificial intelligence, automation and cost pressures are pushing workers out of full-time roles faster than many can reenter them. Meanwhile, the pathways back into stable employment are narrowing, especially in the middle of the labor market where administrative, operational and entry-level professional jobs once served as dependable anchors.

A Gartner survey of 509 supply chain leaders globally across industries from July to October 2025, showed that advancements from AI and agentic AI are expected to be the most impactful drivers of future supply chain performance over the next three years. The survey also revealed that 55% of respondents expected a decline in entry level hiring as a result of agentic AI advancements.

As artificial intelligence continues to disrupt hiring across industries, a growing number of newly displaced workers are turning to solopreneurship — often abruptly and without preparation for the administrative and compliance burden of running a business. That shift is accelerating demand for “employer-of-record” (EOR) service providers, which offer an alternative path to stability, benefits access and business credibility that can resemble traditional full-time employment.

Healthcare organizations are under mounting financial pressure, and the revenue cycle sits at the center of it. Billing complexity, payer friction, labor shortages, and fragmented data systems are converging to suppress realized revenue at scale. Jacob Shurbet, a principal at PwC, has spent years working with health systems on the operational and strategic dimensions of that challenge.  In a recent BizTechReports executive interview, Shurbet laid out how AI is changing the terms of the problem, why most organizations are still struggling to capture the value, and what it actually takes to move from experimentation to execution.  Here is what he had to say: 

Gartner surveyed 140 senior supply chain leaders on their AI strategies in November, 2025. The data showed that only 17% of supply chain organizations are pursuing immediate transformational redesign of their processes and workflows, while 83% are either applying AI incrementally to specific use cases or gradually scaling it into integrated processes.

Cyber insurance is becoming a standard component of risk management across the healthcare sector, particularly among mid-market providers facing increased exposure to ransomware, data breaches, and operational disruption. Yet as adoption grows, the effectiveness of that coverage is increasingly tied not to whether policies are purchased, but to how they are designed, structured, and aligned with operational risk.

Satellite direct to device (D2D) connectivity is moving from concept to early commercialization in Europe, according to new research from Omdia. While the market remains at an early stage, momentum is building: as of March 2026, more than one fifth (22%) of European mobile network operators have launched, are trialing, or have announced D2D satellite partnerships. This level of activity signals growing confidence that D2D will become an important component of future mobile service portfolios.

Healthcare providers are reworking revenue cycle operations as administrative complexity and reimbursement gaps continue to erode margins. Billing, coding, and payer interactions remain a major cost center, while denials, underpayments, and process breakdowns limit cash realization and increase cost-to-collect across the revenue cycle.

Cyber insurance adoption is accelerating across the healthcare sector, but for many mid-market providers, coverage is being secured faster than the risks it is meant to address are fully understood. That imbalance is leaving organizations exposed at the moment they expect protection, according to Fred Barnachawy, founder and managing director of DeshCap, who outlined the issue in a recent BizTechReports executive vidcast interview. He argues that while awareness of cyber threats has improved, many healthcare organizations are still making insurance decisions without a clear view of their underlying risk profile or how policies perform in practice.

The global smartphone market shipped 298.5 million units in 1Q 2026, growing 1% year-on-year (YoY), according to Omdia. The quarter was shaped by two opposing forces. Vendor-led front-loading - as Samsung, Apple, and others accelerated sell-in ahead of expected inflation in memory and component costs - supported momentum and contributed to performance exceeding initial industry expectations. However, macroeconomic headwinds continued to weigh on end-consumer demand. Persistent inflation has compressed household discretionary budgets, creating a widening gap between channel sell-in and underlying sell-out. This imbalance is expected to lead to a more pronounced correction in 2Q 2026 and the second half of 2026.

The 2026 ISG Provider Lens SAP Ecosystem report for Brazil finds that many large organizations are entering a new phase of SAP implementation, following migration to SAP S/4HANA, that is increasingly focused on incorporating AI into workflows and processes. Companies are making sustained investments in data quality, automation and system efficiency to optimize business outcomes.

In Europe, Google TV currently leads with a 32% share but will lose share gradually to three key competitors: VIDAA, Titan OS and TiVo. These three platforms represent a growing group of independent operating systems that are successfully challenging Google TV in Europe.

The survey found that workforce reduction rates were nearly equal among respondents reporting higher ROI from autonomous technologies and those experiencing only modest gains or negative outcomes.

Gartner surveyed 350 global business executives in the third quarter of 2025 to understand the current state of autonomous business at enterprises. Qualifying organizations reported enterprisewide annual revenue of at least $1 billion or equivalent, and they had been piloting or had already deployed at least one of the following: AI agents, intelligent automation or autonomous technologies.

Omdia’s latest analysis, AI Model Trends Spring 2026: State of the Art AI Models and their Compute Demands, shows that parameter growth in frontier models has only been growing around 5% annually since 2021, compared with an expansion of more than a factor of 100 between 2019 and 2021. At the same time, the definition of “small” models is shifting rapidly, with 7B–14B parameter models increasingly replacing 100M-class models, alongside a fast-emerging midsized open-source category gaining momentum across development, sentiment, and adoption.