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AI-RAN Moves from Pilot to Production

Ajeet Das — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note details how AI-RAN shifted from pilot projects to commercial deployment in 2026, with Ericsson and Nokia launching subscription AI-RAN platforms, the AI-RAN Alliance growing to 132 members, and Verizon extending agentic AI across 60,000 sites. It outlines the Alliance's four pillars (AI for RAN, AI on RAN, AI and RAN, and agentic AI), explains how AWS and Microsoft Azure position themselves as orchestration and monetization layers for shared RAN infrastructure, and discusses the ROI validation gap and the GPU versus baseband architecture debate hindering adoption. IDC recommends operators focus on validated, high-ROI use cases such as energy savings and massive MIMO tuning, delay second-wave applications such as computer vision, and consider hyperscaler and accelerator decisions as core infrastructure choices for upcoming budget cycles.

"AI-RAN has moved from lab pilot to a board-level budget line in a single quarter — the operators who win will be those who validate ROI and adopt an accelerator strategy first." — Ajeet Das, research director, Worldwide Telecom Network Infrastructure, IDC.

Dell 2Q 2027 Earnings: AI Orders Surge as Backlog Balloons

Matthew Eastwood — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

IDC Survey: Worldwide Commercial Devices, 2026 — On-Device AI

Linn Huang — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey presents the results from the AI section of IDC’s June 2026 Worldwide Commercial Devices Survey. IDC fielded the survey to 1,824 IT decision-makers across 17 countries spanning all major geographies to understand their device procurement, usage, and future purchasing intentions. Findings include:

AI adoption is reaching the mainstream, but on-device AI still trails overall AI usage by a large gap.
Organizations know what they want from on-device AI: innovation and personalization.
Agentic AI has near-universal appeal, but most want to evolve workflows rather than rebuild them.
OpenClaw has potential to disrupt; equal parts exciting and terrifying.

IDC Survey: 2026 Worldwide Commercial Devices — Computer Fleet

Linn Huang — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

In June 2026, IDC fielded a survey to 1,824 IT decision-makers across 17 countries spanning all major geographies to understand their device procurement, usage, and future purchasing intentions.

This IDC Survey document presents the results from the computer fleet section of the survey. Highlights include:

IT budgets are expanding, but memory-driven cost inflation threatens to erase gains.
The Windows 10 migration trail defines the near-term PC refresh opportunity still.
Mac continues to gain momentum.
Desktops persist for functional reasons, not legacy ones.

Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight: How Are Vertical Sectors Addressing IT/Connectivity and Related Cost Impacts?

Paul Hughes — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight examines how enterprises view the impact of tariffs and economic shifts on the cost of IT services, and how tech-specific tariffs or currency changes will most affect budgets. Over 60% will simply increase their IT budget to address increased costs; however, that percentage differs significantly by vertical market.

The data in this Spotlight comes from IDC’s 2026 Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending Survey Wave 4, with 1,835 respondents across 27 countries and 15 vertical industries.

Consumers Against or With Retailers? A 2026 Comparison Across Two IDC Surveys

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation examines where retailer strategies and consumer expectations align or diverge across the retail industry in 2026. The analysis is structured around eight thematic areas: conversational and agentic AI; personalization and cross-channel continuity; fulfillment, delivery, and the last mile; in-store experience; trust, data, and privacy; payments and the agentic payment horizon; sustainability and ESG legibility; and channel and revenue mix. Each theme is discussed from both the consumer and retailer perspectives, culminating in a convergence-and-divergence matrix and a closing discussion of gaps in current retailer strategy. The consumer perspective draws on IDC’s WW Retail Consumer Insights Survey (May 2026), while the retailer perspective draws on IDC Retail Technologies & Business Process Trends, 2026.

IBM's Dual-Architecture Processor Brings Native Arm Execution to the Mainframe

Kuba Stolarski, Jeff Janukowicz, Brent Ellis, Dr. William Lee, Jim Hines — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

At the Hot Chips 2026 conference, IBM disclosed a next-generation processor for future IBM Z and LinuxONE systems that executes both the z/Architecture and Arm (AArch64) instruction sets natively on every core. IBM describes it as the industry's first dual-architecture mainframe processor and the first hardware result of its April 2026 collaboration with Arm. The disclosure matters less for its peak specifications than for the software boundary it moves. Running Arm-based Linux on the same silicon that runs z/OS and existing Linux workloads, and exposing the platform's cryptography, compression, and AI accelerators to Arm software through standard Linux interfaces, positions IBM Z and LinuxONE to host the growing body of cloud-native and AI software written for Arm without asking customers to give up the reliability, security, and availability that keep mission-critical workloads on the platform.

IDC Survey Spotlight: How Do Wholesale Telcos in EMEA Adapt Their Networks to Increased AI Workloads?

Jan Hein Bakkers — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight highlights data from IDC's May 2026 Worldwide Telco DX Network Infrastructure and Cloud Survey. The data provides insights into network strategy actions that wholesale operators in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are prioritizing in response to increased AI workloads.

Salesforce Expands Headless 360, Moving Beyond Developer Enablement to Enterprise-Wide Agentic Access

Adam Reeves — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

On August 19, 2026, Salesforce announced an expansion of Headless 360 from a developer-focused programmatic access layer into an enterprise-wide set of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, reusable skills, and cross-channel tools spanning every major cloud in its portfolio. The update reflects Salesforce's intent to make agentic access a means for both people and AI agents to interact with the platform.

IDC Survey: Worldwide Commercial Devices, 2026 — Memory Crisis

Linn Huang — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey presents the results from the memory crisis section of IDC’s June 2026 Worldwide Commercial Devices Survey. IDC fielded a survey to 1,824 IT decision-makers across 17 countries spanning all major geographies in June 2026 to understand their device procurement, usage, and future purchasing intentions. Highlights include:

Memory shortage awareness is near universal, but most are monitoring, not mobilizing … yet.
Vendor satisfaction is low, and the improvement asks are too comprehensive.
Organizations view availability and pricing as equally urgent.
Most organizations expect normalization by mid-2027, but the tail is long.