MWC 2025, Sunday 2 March

Our team is back in Barcelona to bring you the latest news and highlights from the biggest trade show in the tech world. Ahead of the official start of MWC on Monday, we’re kicking off our coverage with the biggest announcements of day zero. Major stories today included Qualcomm’s launch of Dragonwing, Orange’s new network API business, Honor’s ambitious AI plan, and Nokia’s focus on AI, 5G standalone and defence solutions.

Qualcomm Launches Dragonwing Brand on the Eve of MWC

Qualcomm has launched a new brand to sit alongside the long-standing Snapdragon moniker. Whilst Snapdragon accounts for all device-orientated experiences including automotive, mobile, compute, extended reality, wearables, audio and gaming, Dragonwing is focused on Qualcomm’s enterprise and industrial portfolio. This includes industrial and embedded internet of things (IoT), networking infrastructure and cellular infrastructure.

This is a logical segmentation of Qualcomm’s portfolio, providing a brand identity for a subset of offerings that have clear growth potential but which have struggled to assert themselves alongside the poster child Snapdragon brand. The move is also timely given that Qualcomm is resetting its strategy to address a sprawling opportunity in various industry sectors. The multitude of Qualcomm brands does mean that the addition of Dragonwing risks causing more confusion in the near term, but CCS Insight believes that with a long-term commitment to Snapdragon and Dragonwing brands, Qualcomm’s capability set becomes clearer.

Qualcomm must clearly communicate that a plethora of sub-brands, such as Oryon, Adreno, Hexagon and FastConnect, are enabling technologies across the entire Snapdragon and Dragonwing portfolios. Discipline and consistency in their usage and presentation will be paramount to the success of the new brand strategy with Dragonwing.

Nokia Talks Up AI, Defence and 5G Standalone as Foundations for Growth

Outgoing CEO Pekka Lundmark set out three areas for growth at Nokia’s event: data centres, investing to accelerate momentum; defence, citing the Banshee radio; and private wireless and industrial edge. He refused to be drawn on geopolitical impacts, except insofar as highlighting that Nokia’s use of contract manufacturers gives the firm flexibility to respond to new tariffs. However, Nokia claimed to have more wireless research and development in the US than its competitors combined. CCS Insight sees this as a double-edged sword: it could insulate Nokia from US-originated risks as Nokia thinks, but it could create other challenges if customers wish to distance themselves from US supply chain exposure.

The shift to cloudification, 5G standalone and AI were cited as key topics for Nokia. The company says it has supplied 35 of the 5G standalone networks deployed, or about half. However, Nokia also noted that more than 120 standalone deals are in place across all vendors globally, indicating slow deployment. CCS Insight sees 5G standalone as a critical foundation for generating revenue from 5G, and network vendors need to persuade operators to move forward if AI, 5G-Advanced, IoT, network APIs and other 5G benefits are to be fully exploited.

Several partners spoke at the event. T-Mobile’s Ulf Ewaldsson, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison’s Vikram Sinha and SoftBank’s Ryuji Wakikawa discussed the AI and AI RAN opportunity. Lockheed Martin spoke about the collaboration on Nokia’s Banshee field radio that puts a 4G or 5G base station in a backpack that weighs just 8 kg and moves the military from 3G-grade equipment into a modern era. The Infinera acquisition closed just before MWC, but it’s too early for Nokia to comment on the steps for integration.

The AI-RAN Alliance Expands, But Remains Geopolitically Western

The AI-RAN Alliance, which launched at MWC 2024, has expanded its reach across the network industry with new members and two new radio access network (RAN) AI initiatives. However, the Western- and Arm-centric focus remains, highlighting the fissures emerging in the global mobile ecosystem.

From 11 founding members, it now has 75 member organizations. Significant newcomers include Amdocs, Cohere Technologies, Dell, Fujitsu, Kyocera, Mavenir, NEC, Qualcomm and Red Hat. Intel is still notable for its absence, highlighting the risk of losing traction in the RAN as Arm-centric players drive AI adoption, likely in time becoming a part of the 6G standard.

Similarly, the alliance remains a Western-centric play for now at least, with none of the leading Chinese network vendors involved. In part, this is because of the growing synergies between the Western Open RAN approach and the efforts of the AI-RAN Alliance. If mobile industry standards aren’t going to split, Chinese vendors will eventually need to be involved, although this could happen later through the AI-RAN Alliance’s inputs to the 3GPP process.

The AI RAN Alliance is also adding two new initiatives. Firstly, Data for AI focuses on creating a process to use data from real-time systems and simulators to improve AI performance and benchmarking. In time, this could take advantage of the 6G “sensing” capability. Secondly, Test Methodology will develop methodologies to quantify AI applications and AI RAN solutions.

These complement the AI-RAN Alliance’s three current working groups on using AI to improve performance, running RAN-related AI workloads and running non-RAN AI applications on RAN infrastructure. There will be numerous demonstrations of the above on AI-RAN Alliance member company stands at the show.

Honor Pledges $10 Billion to Ambitious AI-Focused Alpha Plan

At its MWC press event, Honor CEO, James Li, announced his intention to transform the business into an “AI device ecosystem company”, with a $10 billion investment over the next five years.

With support from Google and Qualcomm, as well as leading network operators CK Hutchison, Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone, which provided in-person endorsements at the launch event, the initiative appears to carry more weight than some other AI-centric announcements we expect at MWC.

As part of the initiative, Google Cloud promised deep collaboration with Honor to offer agentic AI capabilities, interacting smoothly with third-party applications. Agentic AI is one of the major AI-related trends to emerge in 2025, and we expect many other companies to lay out their plans in this area during the show.

Honor must now use this investment to differentiate itself from rival Chinese smartphone-makers, particularly given the high-profile support from Qualcomm, Google and others, which will help legitimize its brand in the key European market.

More information and analysis of this announcement can be found here.

Verizon Deploys AI Multivendor RIC with Samsung and Qualcomm

Samsung Networks announced that its customer Verizon has installed a RAN intelligent controller (RIC) in its commercial network using Qualcomm’s Dragonwing RAN Automation Suite and Samsung’s AI-powered Energy Saving Manager. Given the numerous recent examples of so-called single-vendor Open RAN solutions, it’s good to see inter-vendor cooperation on the RIC as well as with radios and distributed units. With Ericsson‘s growth in North America, Samsung Networks is using this RIC progress to remind the industry of its significant virtualized RAN presence at Verizon.

Both Samsung and Qualcomm products use AI, indicating that although work on the AI-RAN Alliance continues, there are already real-world uses for AI that are live in commercial networks. Samsung is using AI to manage power levels and claims Verizon is seeing average energy savings of 15%. Qualcomm’s solution uses hybrid and deep neural networks to provide other vendors’ rApps with AI capabilities.

This announcement also reflects one of the first uses of Qualcomm’s new Dragonwing branding. Qualcomm is using Dragonwing for new and existing network equipment; an example of the latter is the previously named Qualcomm Edgewise platform. However, Dragonwing will be used in a wide range of service provider channel equipment, including fixed wireless access routers, which consumers will see alongside their Snapdragon-powered phones, tablets and notebook PCs.

HMD Continues Focus on Healthy Digital Habits and Affordable Branded Phones

HMD hosted its media launch at partner FC Barcelona’s Spotify Camp Nou stadium. Fittingly, it announced two co-branded devices, HMD Barca 3210 and HMD Barca Fusion, featuring the football team’s logo and additional digital content assets. This continues a long tradition of branded devices from HMD, with previous partnerships including Barbie and Heineken.

However, the biggest news was the unveiling of the HMD Fusion X1, which the company described as the “first smartphone for teens”. This builds on HMD’s work over the past couple of years in digital detoxing and more responsible use of mobile devices, including its Better Phone project. The Fusion X1 is the first device developed in partnership with children’s smartwatch-maker, Xplora. HMD has integrated Xplora’s software with features including remote parental control of access to social media and the internet, location tracking, School Mode and more. Child actress Drew Barrymore appeared at the launch event endorsing HMD’s strategy and referring to her two children as examples of potential users of the device.

The most interesting new product we spotted wasn’t a phone, but the Amped Buds true wireless headphones. They feature a 1600 mAh reverse charging case that magnetically attaches to any smartphone supporting wireless charging. The company also unveiled a trio of feature phones, which now sport HMD rather than Nokia branding.

In the challenging mobile device market, HMD must offer differentiated products with a unique marketing message. It’ll be hoping these new additions to its portfolio, and the focus on the responsible use of mobile phones, resonate with a wide enough audience to sustain its position in the market.

Orange Launches API Business Unit, Orange LiveNet

Network APIs will be a major theme for operators at MWC and we expect countless demonstrations on the show floor. LiveNet will help developers and businesses gain access to advanced network functionalities, using APIs. Orange was one of the original partners of the GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative, launched at MWC two years ago, and is also part of Aduna, the new joint venture created by Ericsson and more than 10 international operators in September 2024. Orange says that the first commercial APIs as part of this new approach are identity and antifraud solutions, followed by geolocation and quality-on-demand, which will be demonstrated in Barcelona.

Xiaomi Launches Latest Flagship Smartphones Globally

As expected, Xiaomi extended the availability of its Xiaomi 15 and 15 Ultra devices beyond China. The 15 Ultra goes head-to-head with other flagship smartphones such as Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra and Honor’s Magic7 Pro, both powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite platform. Like other smartphone-makers, Xiaomi is betting on a top-line camera being attractive to consumers looking to upgrade their existing devices. It’ll be hoping its partnership with camera brand Leica will make its devices more attractive to consumers who are less familiar with the Xiaomi brand.

Xiaomi also flexed its AI credentials with the inclusion of HyperAI, offering familiar capabilities such as summarizing text, adding live subtitles to videos, editing photos with generative AI and more.

These new products are a rational addition to Xiaomi’s flagship line-up, but it enters an extremely crowded market, with similar products available from Samsung, Honor, Oppo and Google Pixel. Historically, Xiaomi has undercut rivals on pricing, but at €1,000 and €1,500, respectively, the Xiaomi 15 series will need to stand on its own rather than relying on market-leading pricing.

Operators Set to Go All In on AI

In Barcelona, mobile operators will seek to tap into the relentless hype for AI. Among a wide range of demonstrations, Deutsche Telekom will show how the technology can make administration in the justice system more efficient; Orange will present a solution to automate the troubleshooting of fibre networks; and Telefonica will demonstrate a service called CatEye, which can determine whether a patient has cataracts to a sufficient degree to advise surgical intervention. Throughout MWC, we expect to hear about fresh partnerships between operators and large technology companies like Nvidia, Microsoft and Google.

Stay tuned as we bring you daily updates from MWC 2025.