I hope you all had a great week!  

This week, several of the MI&S team will be attending CES (myself, Anshel, Mark, and Melody). 

Our MI&S team published 47 deliverables in the last three weeks: 

• 9 Forbes columns 
• 30 MI&S blogs
• 8 podcasts   

The press quoted us with 16 citations. Journalists wanted to hear about AMD, Amazon, Apple, CES, Fintech, Intel, Micron, NVIDIA, Oracle, Spectrum, Tesla, and Qualcomm.

Quick Insights:

AR/VR (Anshel Sag)

• N/A

Carrier/Wireless (Will Townsend) 

• The FCC C-Band auction continues to break records ringing in the new year at $80B+. At stake are a massive amount of valuable upper mid-band spectrum assets in the 3.7-4 GHz range. AT&T and Verizon need these assets to fill holes in its footprint and broaden 5G deployments. However, while good for the U.S. government coffers, the escalated cost will most likely result in higher subscription and service costs for consumers and enterprises. It may also slow deployment given the massive price tag and need for expensive network densification in this band.

Cloud Services (Rhett Dillingham) 

• N/A

Datacenter 

• Storage- (Steve McDowell) 
  • In a sign of just how competitive and valuable the HCI market has become, VMware filed suit against Nutanix's new CEO (and former VMware COO) Rajiv Ramaswami, alleging conflicts-of-interest. VMware didn't go after Nutanix itself, focusing instead on its former executive who joined Nutanix just two days after leaving the company.  VMware isn't usually a litigious company, so this is a good one to watch. 
  • VMware lost another key executive as Ajay Singh, its V.P. and G.M. of the VMware Cloud business, moves over to Pure Storage, where he will be Pure's, Chief Product Officer.   Singh grew VMware's cloud business from $1B to over $2B during his tenure. A great catch for Pure, as the company continues its move into cloud and services.        
• Networking- (Will Townsend) 
  • Cisco announced another acquisition in late December to round out its analytics platform. Startup Dashbase will be integrated into the AppDynamics platform to facilitate log data aggregation across various communication environments. On the surface, it appears to be a substantial opportunity to strengthen Cisco's capabilities.
• Server- (Matt Kimball) 
  • N/A

FinTech (Melody Brue)

• There are several 2021 predictions around cryptocurrency and digital assets, including the IRS enforcement of tax on crypto assets, the future of stablecoins – a cryptocurrency designed to curb the volatility of the price of the coin, tied to another asset -- leading many people to think it will become a leading entry point for broader adoption than coins like Eth and BTC. Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) seem to be on the list of inevitables in 2021, but which Nation will lead the adoption. What kind of security and privacy concerns this will renew in the market is yet to be seen. The high price of BTC at the moment is reinvigorating the market after we saw massive burnout and crashes in 2018. 
• Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are not the same. That statement may seem like a no-brainer to the people who operate in cryptocurrencies and Blockchain, but the vast majority of people still associate Blockchain with crypto. CES has Blockchain listed under the category of Cryptocurrencies for next week's digital show. This unnecessary coupling will massively change in 2021 as industries outside of financial services offer products and services on the Blockchain. We will see blockchain adoption in healthcare, logistics, copyright usage, royalties, authentication, and so many other applications. I'm hoping we catch a glimpse of this at CES.

Home Automation/ Smart Home (Mark Vena) 

• Significant implications for the smart home: the Wi-Fi Alliance has launched its Wi-Fi 6E certification program for devices equipped to transmit signals on the newly opened 6GHz band; the industry group announced this week.  The move arrives just in time for CES 2021 and sets the stage for a flood of new, next-gen devices capable of tapping into a massive swath of additional bandwidth at the fastest speeds Wi-Fi is currently capable of.
• Sony is probably the most storied T.V. brand still standing, and while it's no longer a top 5 seller, it remains a powerhouse among high-end models -- aka T.V.s that cost a lot of money.  Its 2021 lineup of new sets, announced in advance of CES, includes lots of impressive technology and will likely cost a pretty penny too.
• My favorite smart T.V. system is the Roku platform, but it could face stiffer competition than ever later this year.  In advance of CES, Sony has announced its latest lineup of televisions, and all of them will run Google T.V., the search giant's newest streaming system. No other smart T.V. maker has confirmed Google T.V. availability in the U.S. yet.
• With more of us at home, binge-watching, T.V.s were in high demand, which is why I always like to pay attention to the next coming attractions in T.V.s at CES. There's still a massive T.V. or a rollable T.V. or another impressive -- if gimmicky -- new screen technology that becomes the flashy showpiece of CES.  However, this year it's likely to be L.G.'s transparent OLED screens.  These are going from 10% transparent to 40% transparent, which opens up new possibilities for many creative use cases.  Some of the ones that L.G. will show off at CES 2021 will include a smart bed where the OLED screen rises out of the footboard, a smart subway window where the maps and schedules are overlaid on the glass, and a restaurant partition between booths where you can see large images of menu items. You can also watch while your meal is being prepared.

IIoT and IoT (Bill Curtis)

• Integration complexity is the main reason that most industrial IoT projects fail or fall short of expectations. Until now, IoT providers have responded by offering complete solutions for vertical industries. This rigid, one-size-fits-all approach limits customization options for customers – "Put everything in my world" just doesn't work for real-world IoT. As evidence of this, Cisco recently announced the termination of Cisco Kinetic, its Smart City offering. One of the biggest 2021 IoT trends is transitioning IoT integration from "solutions" to "platforms." This new type of offering pre-integrated devices, middleware, and services from multiple partners in a horizontal way so that customers just focus on vertical application development without worrying about the tough stuff – device networks, device management, end-to-end security, and analytics. For example, AWS Core for LoRaWAN works right out of the box from device to cloud without constraining app development. Azure uses Digital Twin technology to simplify customization across multiple domains. Starting with CES, we'll see a flood of new partnerships in 2021 offering pre-integrated hardware and software that is easy for I.T. pros to program.

Machine Learning/ Artificial Intelligence (Karl Freund) 

• N/A

Personal Computing/ Collaboration (Anshel Sag) 

• Qualcomm Announced the Snapdragon 480, which will bring the cost of a 5G phone down to the $150 to $249 price range
• Qualcomm brought a new CEO, Cristiano Amon, to replace the current CEO, Steve Mollenkopf. Cristiano Amon is the natural heir apparent and has long been the company's face for many events and understands the company's technology and business impeccably.
• Hardware manufacturers for P.C. components, like ASUS, are likely to raise prices in 2021 to account for increased demand and limited supply
• Dell launched a new 5G enabled notebook as well as a new 40" Curved Monitor for productivity
• CES is coming up very soon, and we're going to see a lot of the same stuff this year, and an even heavier focus on automotive, the rebirth of the P.C. during the pandemic, and even more leaning into P.C. gaming. While 5G will be somewhat of a trend, I believe it will be held off more for MWC.
• 5G conspiracy theorists have this time mistaken a guitar pedal for a 5G chip diagram that it believes will be implanted in them if it takes the COVID vaccine
• During the Capitol Riots this week, there were reports of the cellular networks going down. This is because none of the operators had COWs (Cell on Wheels) to help alleviate the network load and deal with the thousands of people crowding the same single cellular node. Many users were live-streaming its experiences and, as a result, overburdened the networks with too many consecutive data-intensive streams. Realistically, 5G would help alleviate this kind of problem, especially mmWave due to the added capacity. However, there aren't enough users on 5G, and I'm not sure there is 5G in front of the Capitol yet.

Quantum Computing (Paul Smith-Goodson)

• Chinese researchers Pan Jianwei (the most famous quantum scientist in China) and Lu Chaoyang at the University of Science and Technology of China claim to have achieved quantum supremacy using a photonic technique called Boson Sampling somewhere between 40 and 70 photons. John Martinis at Google was the first to achieve quantum supremacy and, if proven, this will be the second. Google demonstrated it with Random Circuit Sampling instead of GBS.  Did China do it? We don't yet know, but it will be tested and verified. There are skeptics, of course.  However, if true, it is no small achievement with photons. I'm hoping it's true. It will be an important step forward.
• The Laboratory of Applied Physics at Caltech published a new paper, "Superconducting qubit to optical photon transduction" that demonstrates the conversion of a microwave-frequency excitation of a transmon into a photon. This is a significant development that will be useful for a quantum internet, quantum repeaters, photonic interconnects. It will also help advance distributed quantum computing so that we may scale parallel quantum processing.
• It's good to have Israel as an ally. According to the Jerusalem Post, it has allocated $387.5 million for important quantum projects. That's an increase of over $300 million compared to the small sum of $31 million announced in ion announced December 2018. The funds will focus on military applications such as hacking enemy communications, protecting internal communications, tracking stealth aircraft, and anti-submarine warfare (ASW). These are all areas being aggressively researched by China.

Security (Chris Wilder)

• N/A

Columns Published (Forbes, UPLOAD VR, and others)        

1. Run Your Building From The Coffee Shop: A Conversation With Honeywell Forge's David Trice, by Patrick Moorhead
2. Poly Sync 20 Review: Smart Speakerphone For Hybrid Work, by Patrick Moorhead
3. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Is Growing Up And Gaining Customers, by Patrick Moorhead
4. AI Cambrian Explosion: 2021 Predictions, by Karl Freund
5. The Dell XPS 17: The Content Creator's Dream Laptop, by Anshel Sag
6. Poly Sync 20 Review: Smart Speakerphone For Hybrid Work, by Patrick Moorhead
7. Great Post-Holiday Smart Tech Gifts For Your Home, by Mark Vena
8. Graphcore Raises Yet Another Round, by Karl Freund
9. Varjo Sets A New Standard For Enterprise X.R. And V.R., by Anshel Sag

Blogs Published (MI&S)                                                              

1. AWS Decommoditizing Compute With Re:Invent 2020 Announcements, by Patrick Moorhead
2. Cisco Announces Flurry Of New Webex Experiences At WebexOne Conference, by Patrick Moorhead
3. Cisco Reports It Positively Impacted Half A Billion People With CSR, by Patrick Moorhead
4. The Most Impactful Non-Compute Announcements At Amazon AWS Re:Invent 2020, by Patrick Moorhead
5. Lattice Semiconductor Launches New FPGA For Cyber-Resilient Systems, by Patrick Moorhead
6. Apple MacBook Pro 13" M1 AAA Gaming Experience: Good Performance For Thin And Lite, But Rough Experience For Some Games, by Patrick Moorhead
7. AI Is More Than A Buzzword And Being Deployed Now On Ships And Golf Carts, by Patrick Moorhead
8. An Informative Intel Industry Analyst Conference 2020, by Patrick Moorhead
9. Banks Turning To The Cloud For Growth And Improved Customer Experience, by Patrick Moorhead
10. Lenovo ThinkPad P17 Mobile Workstation Review: Only Professionals Should Apply, by Patrick Moorhead
11. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Adds HPC To Its GreenLake As-A-Service Portfolio, by Patrick Moorhead
12. Intel Labs Moving Mountains With Neuromorphic Computing And Photonics Technologies, by Patrick Moorhead
13. Synaptics' Q1 Earnings Reinforce That It's An IoT Company, by Patrick Moorhead
14. What The Ryzen 5000 Series Desktop Processor Reviews Say About Its Performance, by Patrick Moorhead
15. 30 Years In And Arm Looks Stronger Than Ever, by Patrick Moorhead
16. Intel Announces Gold Release Of OneAPI Toolkits And New Intel Server GPU, by Patrick Moorhead
17. 7 FinTechs Fueling Financial Inclusion, by Melody Brue
18. Amazon AWS Ramps New Hardware For A.I., by Karl Freund
19. Crestron's Conferencing Solutions Flourish In The Smart Home, by Mark Vena
20. An Interview With CEO Steve Lee About The Flagship PureWave Gen II, by Zane Pickett
21. Collaboration Is The New Competition In FinTech, by Melody Brue
22. Never Heard Of Silicon Lifecycle Management? Join The Club. , by Karl Freund
23. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Lab Efforts Seek To Enable 5G On A Massive Scale, by Will Townsend
24. The Upcoming Women In Quantum Summit III And Its Secret 70-Year-Old Legacy, by Paul Smith-Goodson
25. Surface Duo Review: Misunderstood And Underappreciated, by Anshel Sag
26. T-Mobile TVision Review: More Competition In Streaming Services Welcomed, by Zane Pickett
27. 5 "Smart" Stocking Stuffers Worth Your Attention This Holiday Season, by Mark Vena
28. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 Builds On Leadership In 5G, A.I. And Gaming Performance, by Anshel Sag
29. Pure Storage Beats The Odds, Again, by Steve McDowell
30. The Cambrian A.I. Explosion Ramps Up, by Karl Freund

Podcasts:

The G2 on 5G by Moor Insights & Strategy, with Anshel Sag and Will Townsend

• Episode 34 Jan 8, 2021
  • Private 5G networking ramps in 2021
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 5G Chipset & New CEO
  • SK Telecom and AWS partner to deliver edge cloud services with Wavelength to supercharge 5G services  
  • 5G Chip in COVID Vaccine - Actually A Guitar Pedal
  • FCC C-Band Auction Breaks $80 billion - what are the implications?
  • T-Mobile is preparing for 5G FWA after testing with 4G Pilot
• Episode 33 - Dec 23, 2020
  • Will Open RAN have a demonstrable impact on 5G deployments?
  • China Mobile claims 147 million 5G Subscribers, up from 6.7 million in January
  • Ericsson aims to bring disruption to maritime communication with 5G 
  • 3GPP Anticipates Release 17 will be complete in 2022
  • U.S. military aims to make 5G the center of communications with JADC2
  • C-Band Auction, now in its 30th round, has raised over $50 billion
• Episode 32 - Dec 11, 2020
  • Microsoft Azure and D.T. strike a 7-year strategic partnership
  • Jio launching 5G network in 2H 2021
  • AWS ReInvent 5G takeaways
  • Qualcomm and NTT DoCoMo commercially launch first commercial Sub-6 Carrier Aggregation with speeds up to 4.2 Gbps
  • Marvell announces end to end 5G OpenRAN portfolio
  • 5G mmWave developments - AT&T Falling Behind Verizon and L.G. U+, L.G. Electronics and Qualcomm bring mmWave to South Korea.

DataCentric Podcast by Moor Insights & Strategy, with Matt Kimball and Steve McDowell

• Digital Transformation during an Uncertain Time – with Bipin Sahni is the Chief Strategy Officer, Persistent Systems
  • I.T. in the time of COVID, data migration, stack modernization, hybrid-cloud and as-a-service adoption, and the emergence of A.I. in the enterprise.

SmartTechCheck Podcast by Moor Insights & Strategy, with Mark Vena

• SmartTechCheck Podcast (12-31-20)
  • Tech journalists Rob Pegoraro, John Quain, and Stewart Wolpin discuss big consumer "hits" and "misses" in 2020 and predictions about 2021.    

The Six-Five Podcast by Moor Insights & Strategy and Futurum Research, with Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman

• Qualcomm SVP Alex Katouzian on the New Snapdragon 4 Series, OEM Value Prop and Glimpse into 2021
  • New Snapdragon 4 Series
  • 2020 highlights
  • 4 vs. 8 Series 
  • OEM value prop 
  • A glimpse into 2021.
• 2020 Reflections: A Year in Review End of 2020 Jam Session- Six Five Live Podcast Ep 63
  • Covid-19
  • SaaS
  • Semiconductors
  • Hybrid cloud
  • Collaboration
  • P.C. is strategic
  • Techsys
  • Where's Daniel?

The Moor Insights & Strategy Podcast, with Moor Insights & Strategy analysts 

• N/A 

Press Citations: 

1. Amazon / USATODAY https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2020/12/19/amazon-sidewalk-experts-security/3939298001/ 
2. Analyst / Eweek https://www.eweek.com/innovation/top-10-technology-analysts-of-2020 
3. Apple / SDXCentral https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/opinion-editorial/apples-m1-macs-offer-hints-of-arms-data-center-future/2021/01/ 
4. AMD, Chipset / EnterpriseAI (Karl) https://www.enterpriseai.news/2021/01/04/amd-unveils-speedier-chiplet-design/ 
5. AMD, Chipset / HPCWire https://www.hpcwire.com/2021/01/05/amd-files-patent-on-new-gpu-chiplet-approach/ 
6. CES / Wired https://www.wired.com/story/ces-2021-what-to-expect/ 
7. Fintech / Crowdfundinsider (Melody) https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2020/12/170690-fintech-firms-and-incumbents-are-collaborating-instead-of-directly-competing-in-post-covid-world-industry-analyst-explains/ 
8. Intel / SDXCentral https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/activist-investor-implores-intel-to-explore-external-fabs/2020/12/ 
9. Intel, Microsoft / Barrons https://www.barrons.com/articles/intel-stock-sinks-on-report-microsoft-may-build-own-chips-for-azure-servers-51608331195 
10. Intel / Newslookout https://newslookout.com/world-news/intel-needs-to-do-a-better-job-reassuring-its-investors-moor-insights-and-strategy-founder/ 
11. Micron, Earnings / Siliconangle https://siliconangle.com/2021/01/07/micron-easily-beats-first-quarter-earnings-expectations/ 
12. NVIDIA / EnterpriseAI https://www.enterpriseai.news/2020/12/18/nvidia-moves-its-software-closer-to-cloud-customers-through-an-aws-storefront/ 
13. Oracle, Tesla, HP / Daily Sabah https://www.dailysabah.com/business/tech/silicon-valley-losing-some-tech-stars-in-political-pandemic-shift 
14. Spectrum / Marketplace (Will) https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/08/mobile-media-giants-submit-record-bids-as-5g-spectrum-auction-tops-78-billion/ 
15. Tesla / Jakarta Times https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50796379/tech-stars-quit-silicon-valley-citing-politics-and-pandemic/ 
16. Qualcomm / Technewsworld (Anshel) https://www.technewsworld.com/story/86969.html 

New Gear or Software We are Using and Testing that is Public Knowledge 

• Apple MacBook Pro 13" M1, MacBook Air M1, MacBook Mini M1, iPhone 12 mini 
• Dell XPS 13 EVO laptop
• HP Spectre EVO 13 laptop
• Huawei P40 Pro 
• IBM Qiskit software
• Intel ATX12VO motherboard & PSU
• Razer EVO laptop
• Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2
• TCL 10 5G U.W.
• Xbox Series X 

 Events MI&S Plans on Attending In-Person or Virtually (New) 

• January 2020
  • CES Virtual, Jan 11-14 (Anshel Sag, Patrick Moorhead, Mark Vena, Melody Brue)
  • 24th Annual Conference on Quantum Information Processing, Jan 29 -Feb 5 (Paul Smith-Goodson)
• February 2020
  • 24th Annual Conference on Quantum Information Processing, Jan 29 - Feb 5 (Paul Smith-Goodson)

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The Team 

Analysts and Analysts In-Residence

1. Patrick Moorhead, Founder, President, Principal Analyst; Broad technology coverage and deep insights into Cloud & SaaS, IoT, Personal Computing, Semiconductors, Automotive 
2. Bill Curtis, Analyst In-Residence, IIoT, and Deep IoT Technology 
3. Rhett Dillingham, Senior Analyst, Cloud Services 
4. Karl Freund, Senior Analyst, HPC, and Deep Learning 
5. Matt Kimball, Senior Analyst, Datacenter Servers, CI, and HCI 
6. Melody Brue, Senior Analyst, Financial Tech
7. Steve McDowell, Senior Analyst, Datacenter Storage, and Storage Technologies 
8. Anshel Sag, Senior Analyst; V.R., P.C. Gaming, Mobile Platforms 
9. Paul Smith-Goodson, Senior Analyst; Quantum Computing 
10. Will Townsend, Senior Analyst; Carrier Equipment and Services, DC Networking 
11. Chris Wilder, Senior Analyst, Security 
12. Mark Vena, Senior Analyst, Smart Home, and Home Security 

Operations 

1. Dan Pickens, Business Director 
2. Paula Moorhead, Marketing Director, Website, and Social Media 
3. Walker Pickens, Media Relations, and Writer 
4. Zane Pickett, Office Manager, A.P., AR, travel, writer 
5. Lee LeClercq Williams, Business Associate