rssconsumer

8x8 Builds an AI-Focused, Outcomes-Driven Communications Engagement Platform

Michelle Morgan, Paul Hughes, Denise Lund, Oru Mohiuddin — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Canadian Communications Service Provider CapEx Spending, 2025–2026

Praveen Datta — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective provides an update on capital spending in the Canadian wireless and wireline telecommunications markets for the years 2025 and 2026. Canadian communications service providers’ capital expenditures are projected to decline for a fourth consecutive year in 2026, driven by regulatory changes, completed fibre and 5G buildouts, and a focus on debt reduction. While traditional network investments wane, spending is shifting toward AI datacentres and digital transformation. Competitive pressures, low pricing, and regulatory mandates continue to challenge profitability and investment, prompting providers to seek operational efficiencies and new growth opportunities beyond legacy telecom services.

“Fibre and 5G wireless buildouts being past the peak, combined with CRTC decisions that reduce incumbent return on capital investments, are driving the reduction in investment in the Canadian telecom market,” says Praveen Datta, research director, Canadian Communications Services at IDC. “Despite this, Canadian telecoms are investing for the future via increasing capital spending on AI datacentres and non-legacy areas. They could find more capital by allowing pricing on core services of mobile phone and home internet to follow inflation rates to better reflect the value and utility those services deliver to end users.”

Millennial Consumers and the Golden Age of Tech Buying

Greg Ireland, Kelly Brown — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation highlights key attributes of millennial and Gen Z consumers. As we look at the ways in which millennials are leaders in consumer technology adoption, we see that we are in a golden age of tech buying across both consumer and business sectors. This presentation highlights key facets of millennial engagement with technology, notes differences between millennial and Gen Z consumers, and provides recommendations to technology providers and marketers.

Orange Takes Full Ownership of MasOrange: Spain Cements Position as Orange Group's Strategic Second Pillar

Alejandro Cadenas — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

On June 8, 2026, Orange announced the completion of its acquisition of the remaining 50% stake in MasOrange held by Lorca, taking full ownership of Spain's leading telecommunications operator for €4.25 billion in cash. The transaction concludes a process initiated in December 2025 and elevates Spain to a fully consolidated, strategic position within Orange Group.

Digital Advertising Update: The Structural Shifts Reshaping the Adtech Landscape in 2026 and Beyond

Roger Beharry Lall — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective discusses several forces shaping the adtech landscape in 2026 and through the end of the decade. AI is transforming digital advertising by driving performance accountability, creative bifurcation, operational automation, and supply chain transparency. Success will depend on brands' and vendors' readiness for AI-driven environments, including investment in interoperable architecture, first-party data, and creative governance. As AI agents mediate discovery and buying, those that adapt their infrastructure and strategy for agentic commerce will secure competitive advantage, while legacy models and opaque supply chains face growing obsolescence.

"In the age of AI, advertising's future won't be won by those clinging to legacy models, it will belong to those that reimagine data, creativity, and transparency for agentic systems. The real disruption isn't coming; it's already here, quietly rewriting the rules beneath the surface." — Roger Beharry Lall, research director, Advertising Technologies

IDC Presentation: State of Agentic Commerce in EMEA

Cristiano Quattrini — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation examines the state of agentic commerce in EMEA, with a specific focus on how retailers are moving from broad GenAI experimentation toward more concrete agentic AI deployment and commerce execution in 2026. It highlights that investment momentum is no longer limited to customer-facing AI features, but is expanding across the enabling foundations of agentic commerce, including CDP, CRM, agentic data management, IAM, hybrid architecture, edge capabilities, and retail data security.

The analysis shows that EMEA retailers increasingly view agentic commerce as a data, identity, orchestration, and infrastructure challenge, rather than simply as an AI-powered shopping interface. While investment intentions are strong, execution remains selective and uneven. Most organizations are still operating at mid-level journey orchestration maturity, with the market progressing from AI-assisted discovery and personalization toward more advanced but still selective, autonomous delegation.

The presentation also compares the EMEA, Germany, and the U.K. retail markets in this context. Germany emerges as a market with relatively strong actual agentic AI investment and infrastructure readiness, but a more cautious approach to front-end commerce and CX stack expansion. This suggests a disciplined, staged adoption model focused on data control, governance, product information consistency, and operational resilience. The U.K., by contrast, shows a broader and more aggressive modernization agenda across commerce, CX, and architecture priorities. Overall, the presentation argues that scalable agentic commerce will depend less on isolated AI pilots and more on retailers’ ability to build trusted, secure, real-time, machine-readable commerce environments.

“Agentic commerce in EMEA should not be interpreted as an overnight shift to fully autonomous purchasing. The market is moving through a staged progression, from AI-assisted discovery, service, personalization, and orchestration toward selective delegation of commercial decisions. Retailers that will move fastest are not necessarily those experimenting most visibly with customer-facing agents, but those building the data, identity, security, and architecture foundations required to make autonomous commerce trusted, scalable, and operationally reliable,” said Cristiano Quattrini, senior associate advisor, IDC Retail Insights.

IDC Survey Spotlight: Do Consumers Still Prefer Leasing Equipment from Their Internet Service Providers, or Are They Buying Their Own Equipment?

Denise Lund — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight answers the following question: Do consumers still prefer leasing equipment from their internet service providers, or are they buying their own equipment?

Broadband customers continue to show a strong preference for leasing broadband equipment from their internet service provider:

Residential broadband customers still lease equipment from their service provider, showing that convenience continues to drive many consumer decisions. Simplicity remains a major driver, especially for households that prefer an easy setup with minimal technical involvement. Leasing eliminates up-front cost, ensures compatibility, and shifts maintenance responsibility to the service provider.
Consumer ownership remains substantial, with one-third of households choosing to buy their own modem, gateway, or router, indicating that a meaningful group still wants more control over their equipment. Confusion still exists among customers, as nearly 10% of people don't know whether they lease or own, which means service providers could improve communication on equipment and billing.
Service providers can guide customers toward the right equipment, especially since many users prefer leasing and rely on the service provider's recommendations. Service providers can suggest better routers or mesh systems to improve Wi‑Fi performance and reduce support calls. By leveraging AI, service providers can monitor equipment, detect issues early, and fix them before customers notice. AI can also identify homes that may benefit from upgraded devices or faster plans, creating new chances for upselling.

The Bot Surge in Digital Commerce: How Generative AI Has Reshaped the Automated Threat Landscape for Online Merchants and Advertisers

Heather Hershey — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines the sustained rise in automated bot traffic against digital commerce merchants and identifies its inflection point at the public release of large language models in late 2022.

Drawing on independent threat research data through 2025, the document establishes that:

Automated traffic has overtaken human traffic on the open web
Digital commerce is among the most heavily botted sectors globally
The operational impact on merchants now extends well beyond the security perimeter into advertising, personalization, and strategic decision-making

This IDC Perspective argues that bot exposure is a sector-level problem rather than a commerce platform one and explores the emerging “gray zone” between malicious automation and legitimate customer-directed AI agents. It provides technology buyers with actionable guidance for building a cross-functional response across security, identity, data hygiene, and commercial policy.

This is essential reading for digital commerce and marketing leaders preparing for a near-term future in which AI agents will increasingly transact on customers’ behalf and for whom determining which bots are engaging with a brand in “bad faith” versus those with legitimate purchase intent.

“Merchants experiencing rising bot pressure should resist the instinct to blame their commerce platform,” says Heather Hershey, research director, AI-Enabled Digital Commerce, IDC. “Instead, invest in portable, layered defenses at the edge. You need sophisticated bot detection strategies that can tell not only the difference between human and bot traffic, but also which bots are in ‘good faith’ and which are not.”

The Potential of Collaborative Sensors

Karen D. Schwartz, Carlos Gonzalez, Ruthbea Yesner — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses how collaborative sensor networks — groups of sensors that work together to share data and coordinate actions — are becoming core to digital transformation strategies and new business models. They provide dynamic, real-time awareness, enabling organizations in a variety of sectors to make smarter decisions and be more resilient.

Unlike individual sensors, which are static, operate largely in isolation, and send data individually to a central processing point, collaborative sensors are part of a network that shares data and coordinates actions. This creates a more collective sensing system with greater capabilities. Together, all the sensors in a collaborative sensor network fuse aggregate data, which then creates a clearer picture of whatever needs to be monitored.

Collaborative sensor networks — which often take advantage of advanced technologies including AI, advanced communications protocols, and data fusion — work by coordinating actions and sharing data in real time. This creates higher-quality insights that can surpass those of individual sensors.

Yet collaborative sensors are still maturing and are considered an emerging technology. They are likely to mature greatly in the next several years, creating more potential use cases. At the same time, there are kinks to be worked out in terms of integration, governance, and scaling.

"Sensors have become more accurate and ubiquitous, edge AI and AI-enabled processing have matured, and connectivity options are reliable," says Karen D. Schwartz, adjunct research advisor, IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP). "These advances have created a real pathway for organizations to start realistically considering collaborative sensor networks for a variety of real-time, situational awareness needs."

Akeneo Acquires PricingHUB: Does the Next Strategic Evolution of PIM Look More Like a CPQ?

Heather Hershey — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Today, product information management (PIM) vendor Akeneo announced the acquisition of PricingHUB, an AI-driven dynamic pricing platform used by large European retailers. The acquisition brings pricing intelligence directly into Akeneo Product Cloud as the company aims to provide one governed home for the two signals that drive most purchasing decisions: what a product is and what it costs.