The Mobile World Trade Show (MWC) opened in Barcelona this Monday, February 26. Between presentations of gadgets and commercial rebound strategies, artificial intelligence is on everyone's lips.
As soon as the event opens, the assessment is taken by Mats Granryd, general director from the Global Association of Telecom Operators (GSMA): “We are facing a lack of growth. We must therefore look for opportunities”.
According to the specialist firm IDC, 1.17 billion smartphones will be sold worldwide in 2023 This may seem enormous, but it is the lowest level in ten years. This lack of interest is notably due to the fact that the latest innovations in smartphones were of little use, not very innovative.
That being said, sales restarted in the fourth quarter and “the dynamic suggests a rapid recovery”. For what ? AI. “AI is probably the most profound revolution in human history: for the first time, humans are creating technology capable of thinking. This is a game-changer”, said enthused Jose Maria Alvarez Pallete, boss of the operator Telefonica.
This technology “is clearly in the process of being democratized and is now embedded everywhere: in telephones, in peripherals, in networks” , underlines Thomas Husson, analyst at Forrester, who expects AI to “relaunch innovation”.
Manufacturers are already giving it their all. joy, revealing new tools powered by AI, more efficient than ever. “We're seeing a combination of AI models that can now be ported directly to a smartphone and chips that are powerful enough to allow these calculations to be done on the phone”, explains Ben Wood, analyst at CSS Insight, to AFP.
The operators SKT (South Korea), Deutsche Telekom (Germany), e& (United Arab Emirates), Singtel (Singapore) and the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Corp. announced their intention to create a “joint venture”, in order to develop language models, the basis of generative AI interfaces. These will be “specifically adapted to the needs of telecommunications companies”, by trying to make digital assistants and chatbots more human.
Will Europe be able to keep up?
“European policymakers need to change direction now. Europe needs investment and investors need to see changes, such as competition policy that allows every market to achieve economies of scale “, pleaded Margherita Della Valle, boss of the operator Vodafone, whose Italian subsidiary is the subject of several desires.
“Currently, our regulatory framework is too fragmented. There are still too many regulatory obstacles to the creation of a true single telecommunications market”, admitted Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, present in Barcelona, reiterating his desire to allow the emergence of pan-European operators.
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