Though significant progress has been made on boardroom awareness and acceptance of the sustainability agenda, capacity challenges and a self-declared lack of expertise at the board level have revealed a gap between intentions and prioritization of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda.

79% of corporate strategists say technologies such as analytics, AI, and automation will be critical to success over the next two years. Strategists said that, on average, 50% of strategic planning and execution activities could be partially or fully automated; currently, only 15% are. Leveraging analytics and AI for more efficient, insightful strategy decisions is one of the biggest challenges and opportunities corporate strategists face this year.

New research from Omdia reveals that the semiconductor market declined in revenue for a fifth straight quarter in the first quarter of 2023. This is the longest recorded period of decline since Omdia began tracking the market in 2002. Revenue in 1Q23 settled at $120.5B, down 9% from 4Q22. The semiconductor market is cyclical, and this prolonged decline follows the upsurge as the market grew to record revenues in each quarter between 4Q20 through 4Q21 following increased demand from the global pandemic.

Decreasing costs and lower capital outlays have enabled several new Small Satellite operators to enter the satellite IoT market with low-cost and low-power satellite connectivity offerings. These new entities seek to challenge traditional satellite IoT incumbents to provide a more cost-effective solution for end customers. According to ABI Research, total satellite IoT connections will increase from 10.4 million in 2022 to 27.0 million in 2030, with satellite IoT connection revenue growing from US$2.2 billion to US$7.8 billion.

Ride-hailing behemoth Didi Global recently announced it was partnering with Chinese new energy vehicle manufacturers to develop robotaxis to deploy by 2025. The move away from personal transport, paralleled by the intensifying thrust on integrated, multimodal, and sustainable transport networks, is providing a fillip to the shared mobility market. Such seismic shifts are underpinned by evolving customer expectations and a raft of enabling technologies, with total GMV from the shared mobility market set to exceed $1 trillion in 2023.

Rising competition from OTT streaming service providers, rapidly changing consumer expectations, and the introduction of disruptive emerging technologies are converging to transform the broadcast sector. Consequently, leaders in the industry are accelerating efforts to modernize investments in production and information technology to support new workflows and operations that will enhance their market positions, according to Eric Deniau, senior vice president of research and development at VITEC, in a podcast interview for journalists.

Generative AI, specifically large language models (LLMs), will change how organizations design jobs and resource tasks and allocate responsibilities across the enterprise. However, LLMs come with unique risks compared with other AI implementations. Generative micro apps are an emerging technology that can enable organizations to demonstrate the value of generative AI while minimizing the business’s risk exposures.

Smart lights and plugs are quickly commoditizing. Parks Associates’ Smart Home Tracker counts more than 80 brands offering smart lights, switches, and plugs in the US market, with all offering core smart features of remote connectivity, and many offer color-changing options and integration with voice assistants for affordable prices. Manufacturers seek premium features, form factors, and services that differentiate them from the competition and earn a premium price point.

"Data sprawl represents a growing challenge for leaders in the highly regulated financial services sector because efforts to modernize enterprise operations are gaining momentum," says Jason Cassidy, CEO of Kitchener, Ontario-based Shinydocs, in a recent podcast interview for journalists.

Supporting the hybrid workforce and mobile-first customers while embracing heterogeneous enterprise architectures is rendering moot conventional data management strategies that call for creating data lakes or other paradigms for centralized data repositories, adds Jim Barnet, director of enterprise accounts at Shinydocs.

"When it comes to high-production content creation – the big movies, TV shows and live events that continue to drive consumer engagement – we haven't really seen a lot of change in over a hundred years," says Vince Pizzica in a podcast interview for journalists.  

A veteran c-suite executive and board advisor in the technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) space, Pizzica has spent the past four decades influencing the strategic direction of major companies in the sector – including Telstra, Siemens, Alcatel, Lucent and Technicolor – while guiding a new generation of ET players who promise to completely redirect the trajectory of the industry (see sidebar).

The AI landscape changed dramatically over the past year with the swift adoption of generative AI, making it more difficult for organizations to be responsible and putting pressure on Responsible AI (RAI) programs to keep up with continuous advances. According to new research by MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group, 53% of organizations rely exclusively on third-party AI tools, having no internally designed or developed AI of their own, and 55% of all AI-related failures stem from third-party AI tools.

Only 8% of customers used a chatbot during their most recent customer service experience, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. Of those, just 25% said they would use that chatbot again in the future. Despite customer service and support leaders’ growing focus on chatbots, customer use of them remains low, suggesting they don’t consistently help customers accomplish their goals.

From ChatGPT to DALL-E and all the technologies in between, the new wave of generative AI systems is transforming business rapidly. While employees are optimistic about how AI—and generative AI, in particular—will affect their work, feelings vary considerably by seniority and country.

In spite of challenges including fragile post-pandemic supply chains; a shortage of science, technology, and engineering workers; and questions about how quickly China can restart its economy, APAC tech spending will continue to grow by 6.8% to 7.3% per year from 2024 to 2027. In 2023, Forrester projects regional tech spend growth to be:

Adoption of high dynamic range (HDR) technology is poised to take a different and more dynamic path to market-wide implementation in Asia compared to North America and Europe, according to Rick Dumont, Head of Business Development for Wireless and HDR, Philips.

Four common myths obscure the full value of cybersecurity for the enterprise and inhibit security program effectiveness. According to Gartner, Inc. CISOs must embrace a “Minimum Effective” mindset to maximize cybersecurity’s impact on the business. Many CISOs are burnt out and feel they have little control over their stressors or work-life balance. Cybersecurity leaders and their teams are putting in the maximum effort, but it’s not having maximum impact.

The telecom industry has witnessed rapid 5G deployments globally. Digitally-enabled services such as 5G cameras, AR-assisted maintenance, remote control, and robotic patrolling are now being widely used in verticals such as mining, healthcare, transport, and manufacturing. But despite the rapid deployment and adoption of 5G, there is still room for considerable improvement to unleash the true potential of this technology. With 6G technology likely to be commercially deployed only by 2030, the existing 5G technology might soon need to level up.

Organizations have been migrating to the cloud to help them achieve business goals of growing revenue, improving customer experience, and increasing operational efficiency. A recent study found that 73% of them see the cloud as the most important technology to achieve business priorities, among other technologies including Big Data Analytics, IoT, Collaboration & Conferencing, and AI/ ML.

The rapid progress of AI tools in finance has made it more important than ever for CFOs and finance leaders to demonstrate three core pillars of human leadership: adaptivity, empathy, and authenticity. As AI becomes ever more capable and carries out more work, inevitably, the question arises about whether AI replaces human employees. The picture emerging as organizations put advanced digital technology into action is a lot more nuanced than whether a job stays or doesn’t.

The 2023 Shanghai Auto Show was an unequivocal demonstration of the technological capabilities of Chinese automakers. Driven by forward-looking regulation and breakthrough technologies, China has been at the forefront of four key megatrends transforming the mobility space. Rapid growth for China’s ICV market is spurred by policy support, subsidies, new business models, and advances in enabling technologies like artificial intelligence and autonomous driving.