According to the International Data Corporation’s (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, India’s smartphone market closed 2025 on a flat note, growing marginally by 0.5% year-over-year to reach 152 million units. Following a subdued start to the year, shipments rebounded during the mid-year quarters before easing again in the final quarter. Shipments declined 5% YoY to 34 million units in the fourth quarter of 2025, as post-festive inventory normalization and cautious consumer spending weighed on demand.

As enterprises accelerate investments in artificial intelligence, many are discovering that the hardest part of the transition is not deploying algorithms or modernizing infrastructure. The greater challenge is reshaping how organizations manage data, develop software, and prepare their workforce for a world in which humans and AI systems operate together.

That was the message delivered by Anjali Arora, chief technology officer of Perforce Software, during the CIO 100 Leadership Live in Atlanta.

Sales through the IT distribution channel increased 6% year over year to $24.3 billion in Q4 2025, marking the strongest quarter on record for North American distribution, according to the IDC North America Distribution Tracker (NADT), powered by GTDC.

The record Q4 performance capped a solid year for distribution, with full-year 2025 revenues rising 6.2%, following flat growth in 2024 and a market contraction in 2023. The results highlight the growing role of distributors as enterprises modernize infrastructure, adopt AI-ready technologies, and rebalance IT spending priorities.

Artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, robotics, and sustainability are converging to reshape the professional AV market at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) Barcelona 2026, according to new analysis from Omdia. The event, scheduled for February 3 to 6, 2026, in Barcelona, will highlight how these technologies are expanding the role of professional AV beyond traditional use cases.

The second edition of Boston Consulting Group's European Competitiveness Barometer, released today, signals widespread concern across the private sector, with 93% of executives warning of potential dire consequences for Europe's competitiveness, innovation, and job retention.

The report, survey of 850 C-level executives and over 6,400 European citizens, finds that 96% of business leaders believe the EU must take immediate steps to protect its commercial interests to avoid severe long-term consequences. That view is echoed by 85% of European citizens.

According to Forrester’s, The State Of Business Buying, 2026, generative AI is fundamentally reshaping how business buyers discover, evaluate, and purchase products and services. While genAI searches are the starting point for B2B buyers, leaders are increasingly relying on their internal and external buying networks — comprising colleagues and external influencers, respectively — to justify and de-risk purchasing decisions. The typical buying decision now includes 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers, with that number rising for more complex or strategic purchases.

According to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, global smartphone shipments increased 2.3% year-over-year (YoY) to 336.3 million units in the fourth quarter of 2025 (4Q25). Despite the memory shortage crisis in Q4 2025, the market was supported by sustained premium growth, strong momentum in foldables and accelerated pull-in demand as consumers anticipated upcoming price hikes. The total number of smartphones shipped reached 1.26 billion units in 2025.

The 2025 ISG Provider Lens global Multi Public Cloud Solutions report finds that enterprises are modernizing legacy environments while building cloud-native architectures to support AI-enabled applications. This has sharpened their focus on cloud infrastructure strength, operational governance and cost management.

The latest research from Omdia reveals that global smartphone shipments grew by 2% in 2025 to 1.25 billion units, marking the highest annual level since 2021. All regions grew compared to 2024, except for Greater China, which marginally declined amid the fading effect of the national subsidy scheme that boosted its performance in early 2025. Strong demand from both upgraders and replacement-buyers continued to boost the market, as several vendors broke records despite uncertainty reigning in the business environment throughout the year.

Worldwide spending on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure reached a record $86 billion in Q3 2025, marking a sustained investment cycle as platform providers scale capacity for training and inference workloads, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Tracker.

As GenAI rapidly reshapes work, especially for less experienced employees, Gartner predicts that by 2030, 30% of enterprises will face declining decision-making quality due to an overreliance on AI.

CHROs must accelerate learning and experience development in these early career roles to sustain performance and maintain talent pipelines.

Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations are experiencing a financial reset. After decades of reliance on multimillion-dollar bespoke aircraft and highly specialized payloads, defense ministries are increasingly shifting to lower-cost, semi-disposable drones and modular video systems that can be deployed quickly, lost in theater if necessary, and replaced without crippling budgets.

Telecom operators worldwide are scaling capital investment in AI infrastructure amid surging demand for AI compute capacity and sovereignty requirements that favour local providers and homegrown solutions, according to Omdia’s new report, Telcos’ Strategic Investments in AI Infrastructure. This shift is creating new growth avenues for telcos. National and regional initiatives, such as the EU’s Gigafactories, are creating opportunities for telcos to lead large scale programs rather than cede them to hyperscalers.

The 2025 ISG Provider Lens Oracle Cloud and Technology Ecosystem report for Europe finds a growing number of companies view Oracle as a specialist hyperscale cloud provider for data- and AI-intensive workloads. They value its database leadership, cost-efficient AI infrastructure and deep multicloud integration that allows Oracle databases to run seamlessly within rival cloud environments.

The record Q4 performance capped a solid year for distribution, with full-year 2025 revenues rising 6.2%, following flat growth in 2024 and a market contraction in 2023. The results highlight the growing role of distributors as enterprises modernize infrastructure, adopt AI-ready technologies, and rebalance IT spending priorities.

As corporations accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence across operations, a growing chorus of technologists, regulators and risk specialists is warning that governance, accountability and intellectual-property protection are lagging dangerously behind innovation.

The ISG Buyers Guide for Sustainability Management, produced by ISG Research, provides the rankings and ratings of 20 software providers and their products to support environmental sustainability. The research finds that enterprises need to accurately measure and disclose environmental impacts to fulfill their sustainability goals, and sustainability software supports these requirements by enabling organizations to provide transparent, auditable disclosures. The Buyers Guide for Sustainability Emerging Providers ranks and rates 12 innovative providers of sustainability software that may better suit specific enterprise needs or offer a lower total cost of implementation and ownership.

The 2025 ISG Provider Lens Multi Public Cloud Services report for the U.S. Public Sector finds that cloud computing has become foundational to government modernization efforts to build resilient infrastructure, compliant data platforms and scalable digital services. SLED organizations are adopting hybrid and multicloud models as they implement AI and machine learning tools for improved services to citizens. Harmonization of regulations and security practices across states and agencies has made it easier for providers to offer common service portfolios and for agencies to maintain compliance.

As corporations accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence across operations, a growing chorus of technologists, regulators and risk specialists is warning that governance, accountability and intellectual-property protection are lagging dangerously behind innovation.

BOSTON—Corporate AI investment is growing significantly and will not pull back, with companies planning to double their spending on the technology in 2026, accounting for about 1.7% of revenues, more than twice the increase for 2025. CEOs are rolling up their sleeves and taking the lead as their companies’ main AI decision makers, with trailblazing chief executives now spending more than eight hours per week on their own AI upskilling and investing twice as much as their counterparts in upskilling and capability-building across their organizations.