The 7th Annual Huawei Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF) in Tokyo saw the telecom gear maker’s rotating CEO, Ken Hu, announce the launch of X Labs, a new research platform meant to bring together operators, technology providers, and vertical industry partners to jointly explore future use cases for mobile applications, drive innovation in business and technology and promote an open industry ecosystem.
At the conference, jointly hosted by Huawei, GSMA and GTI on November 24-25, Huawei identified mobile networks, sensors and man-machine interface, cloud computing, big data and AI as among its key technology drivers.
Hu stressed on the video, household and vertical markets. “The first opportunity we see is in video. Video has become the most popular form of content delivery in media, social and professional communications, like marketing,” Hu said. It is estimated that the video market will reach $700 billion by 2020, he said. “Video and images now account for more than 60% of mobile network traffic. Entertainment video is the largest part of this market, with plenty of room for operator involvement. In industrial applications, mobile video solutions for public safety, traffic surveillance, and logistics are also brimming with opportunity. And in the video communications domain, live video has become a huge global phenomenon,” he said.
On households, Hu said 1.3 billion households around the world don’t have broadband connections, and 300 million have connections slower than 10 Meg. These 1.6 billion households, in total, would offer the perfect opportunity for wireless broadband, he said.
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On the third opportunity, verticals, Hu said that around the world, vertical industries are going digital, and mobile networks can be a key enabler of this digital transformation.
Hu said Huawei aims to identify specific opportunities that can best leverage the capabilities of mobile communications. For example, it could target the areas of connected vehicles, wide-area IoT and public safety.
With these facts in mind, the firm announced the X Labs initiative, which would have three sub-divisions. mLab, the first sub-division, would focus on creating immersive user experience in emerging mobile applications like video, live streaming, VR and AR through a stronger network. vLab, the second, will explore opportunities to better understand how to use mobile technology as an enabler in the digital transformation process of all vertical industries; while the third division, hLab, will focus on broadband at home to develop smart home applications like home health, security and home robots.
Ryan Ding, Huawei executive director and president of products and solutions, called for the telecom industry to begin preparing for 5G. Speaking at the forum, Ding called for telecom operators to focus their preparations on three areas: Infrastructure, operations, and ecosystem development. Huawei set up its first overseas software R&D centre in Bengaluru in 1999. The centre employs around 3,000 people, a Huawei spokesperson said. This year, it also set up a global service centre (GSC) in the city.
The reporter, Harsha Baruah was in Tokyo on the invitation of Huawei
