Cross-industry trends unleashing the next wave of innovation
The acceleration of digitalization, complemented by automation and electrification, will gain wide momentum in the next five to ten years, creating deep and lasting impact across society and industries. This cross-sectoral interplay will be underpinned by rapid technological advances across three cornerstone technologies: AI, cloud and mobile. The next wave of mobile will unleash a world that’s more efficient, sustainable and innovative. Are you ready to capture the value?
Capture the next wave of innovation
Erik Ekudden, CTO Ericsson | The 5G inflection point: Unleashing innovation with the next wave of mobile (Produced by Reuters Plus for Ericsson), video length – 3 minutes 13 seconds).
The 5G Inflection Point: Unleashing Innovation with the Next Wave of Mobile
We are at an inflection point, where 5G is set to unleash a wave of innovation.
Ericsson is driving an industry-wide shift that fundamentally changes how mobile networks are built, deployed and managed, and how connectivity is both consumed and valued.
As the universal force that connects global innovators with the world’s industries, open and programmable 5G networks will serve as the foundation of the new digital ecosystem.
Welcome to the next wave of innovation.
Flagship solutions of the next wave
Three cross-industry shifts igniting new markets
The high performance, programmability and versatility of open 5G networks will serve as a powerful catalyst for universal digitalization across sectors, borders and technology domains in coming years.
This will spur a global momentum shift across other technology paradigms including automation and electrification. These trends will create synergetic value, increasingly interconnecting and, in many cases converging, to drive deep impact across multiple sectors.
Gearing up for the next wave
Mobile: what to expect in the next wave
Erik Ekudden, CTO Ericsson | Mobile, unlocking the next wave of innovation (video length – 9 minutes 37 seconds)
Ubiquitous, high-performance and differentiated connectivity will form the foundation of tomorrow’s digital ecosystem, with network capabilities, such as speed and latency, essentially becoming accessible on demand to a broad ecosystem of businesses and developers.
To this end, we are building a global network platform that will require cross-industry collaboration to form an open network ecosystem of applications developers and enterprises. This will fuel the advancement of new mobile use cases and the expansion of 3GPP networks across new sectors to truly deliver universal digitalization, automation and electrification in the next five to ten years.
These three technologies, and their interdependent advancement, calls for an increasingly collaborative and open ecosystem among leading industry players in mobile, cloud and AI.
New apps and use cases will stimulate a new growth period for mobile
Building on already deployed mobile networks, we see growth opportunities with several new use cases in coming years. In many cases, these use cases combine a new type of end user device coupled with a bespoke connectivity service, where some will likely evolve with new connectivity services in the future.
Use cases such as fixed wireless access, 5G broadcasting and immersive technologies are all expected to generate significant value-add for our industry in coming years, while the introduction of RedCap devices with 5G Advanced will spur a new wave of innovative 5G devices that can scale fast across sectors with minimal complexity.
Disruptive use cases of the next wave
New networks will expand deeper into traditional industries
Under the next wave, 5G will continue its expansion across new markets, bringing enhanced performance, security and innovation opportunities, as well as 3GPP’s economies of scale, to new businesses, sectors and industries. Growth vectors include SMBs, finance, healthcare, public safety services and defense sectors.
Most industry sectors today use proprietary solutions and lack a single connectivity technology base, limiting scale, efficiency and cost optimization. Building a common connectivity platform for all these sectors is no small endeavor and will take time. But one sector at a time, we are proving the value of 5G through performant and resilient solutions such as 5G WWAN, private 5G networks, mission-critical networks and virtual enterprise networks.
Growth sectors of the next wave
Network evolution for the next wave of mobile
The era of traditional mobile is over. The breakthrough of high-performing and programmable network capabilities is unleashing a new era of business innovation built around differentiated connectivity and network APIs, opening up new revenue streams. This is not just a network evolution, it’s an industry-wide revolution that will transform what mobile services can enable and how they are monetized.
Early adopters within the differentiated space
Sony: 5G-enabled media production through an API
Using the existing 5G network for live broadcasting means reduced setup time, fewer cables, lower costs and unprecedented mobility during broadcast production – with no need to compromise on quality and latency. This is ideal for everything from highprofile news and public events to live sports and TV studios.
Toyota: enhancing the driving experience with 5G
Integrating high-performing connectivity into vehicles benefits both Toyota and its customers: owners get enhanced services that make driving safer and more pleasant, and Toyota gets more reliable vehicle insights and seamless product updates. The use cases for connected mobility include infotainment and navigation, vehicle teleoperation and over-the-air updates.
Telia NorthStar: advancing 5G with developers for tomorrow’s use cases
At the center of NorthStar is a purpose-built innovation network, with a new 5G core connected to Telia’s existing network. In this experimental environment, new use cases will be developed across industries – from differentiated service solutions that provide superior quality in Teams meetings, to ultralow latency connections that enable remote-controlled trucks in mining operations.
Related API insights and solutions
The next wave of the edge
The transition to cloud-based computing is on course to grow sharply in coming years, driven in part by the need for extremely large amounts of compute for AI model training.
Hybrid edge cloud deployments look set to dominate enterprise deployments, comprising a combination of on-premises deployments at the network edge, the extended public cloud edge and the private- and gateway edge at enterprises, consumer-facing premises and vehicles.
With the right capabilities across key functions, including a high number of distributed sites and expert network knowledge, CSPs offer a strong value proposition across emerging hybrid environments. Leveraging that proposition will require a multi-edge strategy and a complete end-to-end solution. This can be enabled through extensive engagement with the ecosystem, as well as investment in key network functions including infrastructure, orchestration, user plane and traffic routing, exposure, and services.
Dive deeper into tomorrow's edge
The next wave of AI
The global AI market is projected to grow significantly in coming years, driven by advancements in machine learning, deep learning, generative AI and other AI subfields. This will drive a greater adoption of AI-powered devices, as well as a deeper integration of AI into business processes to support automation, augmented decision making and the development of autonomous systems like self-driving cars.
Across telecom, AI and generative AI will continue to play a pivotal role in the evolution of intent-driven autonomous networks, translating business users’ intents into technical instructions or enabling generative AI agents to perform observability for service assurance. Ericsson already offers intelligent AI-based solutions such as embedded AI-powered MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) sleep mode, AI-based cell shaping and generative AI-powered performance diagnostics and troubleshooting.
