Global IT spending will grow 8.6% this year to $4.21 trillion, after 0.9% growth in 2020, reported Gartner Wednesday. Communications services will be the biggest chunk at $1.44 trillion, followed by IT services ($1.18 trillion) and devices ($784 billion). “Technology spending is entering a new build budget phase,” said analyst John-David Lovelock. “This means building technologies and services that don’t yet exist.” While many companies expect revenue declines post-pandemic, “IT spending is accelerating ahead of revenue expectations,” said Gartner.
Public-private partnerships will help drive mobility-as-a-service ride-hailing deployments to “displace” more than 2.2 billion “private car journeys” globally by 2025, from 471 million trips displaced this year, reported Juniper Research Monday. “As the pandemic wanes, MaaS solution providers should view the increasing demand for travel as an opportunity to disrupt established transport provision ecosystems by demonstrating the cost-effectiveness and efficiencies of their platforms.” It cautioned that the need for vendors to rely on high penetration of mobile devices and internet connectivity to fully exploit MaaS offerings “will limit adoption to developed regions.” Juniper forecasts that more than 70% of the displaced private car journeys will occur in Europe and the Far East by 2025.
The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security added 34 organizations to its entity list for tighter export restrictions, said Friday's final rule. Fourteen are based in China and “have enabled Beijing’s campaign of repression, mass detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and members of other Muslim minority groups," said Commerce. Another five were “directly supporting" China's "military modernization programs," it said. A Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson, anticipating the BIS action, told a news conference Friday in Beijing that this list "is in essence a tool for suppressing specific companies and industries in China under the pretext of human rights."
The Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security added four Myanmar organizations to BIS' entity lists Tuesday for their support of the Ministry of Defense, including through providing telecom services. The companies “pose a significant risk of being or becoming involved” in activities contrary to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, BIS said. BIS also added telecom company King Royal Technologies to the list for providing satellite communication services for the Myanmar military. King Royal didn't reply to an email sent to an address that has been associated with the company. The moves help bar the companies from doing business with U.S.-affiliated businesses.
The GSM Association said Tuesday it’s expanding its fraud prevention service offerings, in a bid to “enhance the telecoms industry’s capacity to combat robocalling and other unwanted or fraudulent calls.” GSMA is working with vendor Mobileum on a new international fraud deterrent system, it said.
All 127 frequency reconfiguration agreements (FRA) for Mexican border licensees in the 800 MHz band have been negotiated, and the 800 MHz transition administrator approved all but one as license validity issues are cleared up, the administrator said in an FCC docket 02-55 final report Monday. It said as of June 10, licensees in 99.2% of Mexican border FRAs had finished physical retunes and transitioned to new channels. It said band reconfiguration is complete in 55 National Public Safety Planning Advisory Committee regions and three U.S. territories. It said it will shut down its website, http://www.800ta.org/, by June 30.
Nearly 4 billion people, half the world’s population, use a smartphone daily, 27 years after IBM’s Simon was launched in the U.S., said Strategy Analytics Thursday. Analyst Neil Mawston called the smartphone “the most successful computer.” Apple’s iPhone “popularized the smartphone in 2007, while Google Android democratized the smartphone with an affordable software platform from 2008,” said analyst Linda Sui. SA predicts 5 billion people will use a smartphone by 2030.
The U.S. and EU will tackle AI issues together in the newly launched Trade and Technology Council because it's vital they "write the rules of the road" together, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told a Thursday virtual BSA|The Software Alliance event. The two regions don't have widely different views on technology, and they share commitments to privacy, democracy and equity, she said: One challenge is to determine how to regulate and set standards for emerging tech in a way that lets it flourish while safeguarding fundamental values. The European Commission unveiled an AI regulatory framework last month based on risk management (see 2104210003). The U.S. wants to develop similar, said Raimondo. She said the key is "robust industry engagement. Industry needs to lean in" and partner with the U.S. government: The goal is to "harness the power but keep a lid on the danger." Ensure tech doesn't undermine trust, said Margrethe Vestager, EC executive vice president-Europe Fit for the Digital Age: That includes ensuring there's no bias in AI. Creating trust and safety for AI is "market-creating," she said: The marketplace for the many applications for AI use within public sector activities won't function without trust. BSA launched its framework for confronting bias in AI Thursday. It calls for a process for carrying out impact assessments to identify and mitigate potential bias risks; identifies existing best practices and technical tools for lessening specific bias risks; and lays out corporate governance processes and safeguards needed for effective risk management. Separately, Raimondo met with EU officials at the June 14-16 U.S.-EU summit, Commerce newly blogged. She and EC officials agreed on the importance of data transfers and the need to continue talks on a successor to data-sharing mechanism Privacy Shield. They "recognized that, while key issues remained to be addressed in those negotiations, the liberal values and commitment to individual privacy shared by the U.S. and EU would help drive those negotiations to a mutually-agreeable resolution at the appropriate time."
Huawei believes the U.S. should “put the evidence out there” to justify recent actions to curb the presence of the Chinese telecom gear vendor’s products on U.S. networks, the company's U.S. Chief Security Officer Andy Purdy said during an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators set to telecast this weekend. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday denied Huawei’s challenge to the FCC ban of its equipment from networks funded by the USF (see 2106220053). Commissioners are to vote July 13 on congressionally mandated changes to its system for replacing insecure U.S. network equipment from Huawei and fellow Chinese vendor ZTE (see 2106210062). U.S. restrictions hurt Huawei “pretty badly in terms of our ability to do business” in the country, Purdy said. “Things are not going very well.” If “Huawei has done bad things, show us” so “the whole world can see so that they don’t just need to create incentives” not to buy Huawei products, he said. “There is not such evidence” and there “is no connection” between Huawei and the Chinese government “other than any other company around the world would have.” The U.S. shouldn’t “do things” like the FCC did in using “predictive judgment” to justify its anti-Huawei actions, Purdy said. “That’s not really consistent with the rule of law approach” that federal agencies generally employ.
About half of all “knowledge workers” globally will work remotely at year's end, compared with 27% in 2019, reported Gartner Tuesday. The hybrid workforce will continue to increase demand for PCs and tablets, shipments of which are expected to exceed 500 million units this year for the first time, it said. Gartner estimates remote workers will be 32% of employees worldwide by Dec. 31, up from 17% in 2019. It defines knowledge workers as those in “knowledge-intensive” occupations, such as writers, accountants and engineers. Remote workers by Gartner's definition spend at least one day a week working from home. The U.S. will lead other regions with 53% of its workforce working remotely in 2022, followed by the U.K. (52%), Germany (37%), France (33%), India (30%) and China (28%).