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Agentic Commerce Approaches a Tipping Point: Tech Giants Battle for Dominance

Gerry Murray — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective assesses 2026 agentic commerce announcements and their implications for technology suppliers. It maps six commercial control points, identifies monetization models and cross-cutting control rights, examines the total intermediary take rate, and evaluates how partnerships and regional ecosystems redistribute power across competing routes to market.

"The suppliers that dominate their layer of the agentic commerce ecosystem and hold proprietary records, governed decisions, and verifiable outcomes will keep pricing power. Those that depend on connectors or interfaces will be more vulnerable to margin erosion," says Gerry Murray, research director, Enterprise Marketing Applications and Agents, IDC.

IDC Survey Spotlight: Who's Keeping a Home Landline Phone and Why?

Daniela Rao — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight provides insight into consumers' usage and perspectives on their home landline service. The results are based on IDC's Consumer Communications and Mobile Services Survey, September 2026.

"Home phone retention and replacement intentions differ considerably across age groups. While older landline customers overwhelmingly intend to retain their service, younger customers show greater interest in VoIP and app-based alternatives than in mobile-only replacement. For service providers, this creates an opportunity to evaluate how home voice offerings can evolve alongside broadband and mobile services while preserving the value of existing customer relationships," said Daniela Rao, senior research and consulting director, Worldwide Telecom and Unified Communications, IDC.

Agentic Commerce Approaches a Tipping Point: Brands Race to Prepare

Gerry Murray — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses how agentic commerce is moving faster than most marketing organizations can adapt. IDC projects that agentic shopping will grow from 3% of U.S. retail digital commerce transaction value in 2026 to 50% by 2033, while the platform capabilities that enable it are already shipping. CMOs should treat brand preference, machine-readable product evidence, governed real-time offers, and contractual control over customer data as one integrated discipline. Brands that benchmark their agent inclusion, verify transaction paths, and secure data rights now will be reliably selectable when agents make decisions.

"An agent can only recommend what it can verify and only buy what a brand can honor at decision time. The winners will pair human preference with machine-readable proof, then back both with offers, inventory, and authorizations that execute inside the agent's decision window" — Gerry Murray, research director, Enterprise Marketing Applications and Agents, IDC

Orange 3Q26 Results: Orange Delivers Solid Revenue Growth and Raises EBITDAaL Target

Ghassan Abdo, Jan Hein Bakkers — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

On October 27, 2026, Orange published its financial results for September 30, 2026. In the third quarter, group revenue reached €12,191 million, up 3.6% on a comparable basis, and EBITDAaL (EBITDA after leases) reached €4,140 million, up 4.6%, with a margin of 34.0% (up 0.3 percentage points). After EBITDAaL growth of 4.8% in the first nine months, Orange raised its 2026 growth guidance to more than 4.5% (previously more than 4%). The Middle East and Africa (MEA) remained the primary contributor to group growth (+14.2%), while retail services increased 3.3% and wholesale revenue declined 5.1%. Orange's nonstandard eCAPEX (economic CAPEX) was €1,712 million (-2.5%) and represented 14.8% of revenue over nine months, in line with the target of around 15%.

By segment, the Middle East and Africa generated revenue of €2,401 million (+14.2%) and remained the largest contributor to growth. Europe 6 (Poland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Romania, and Moldova) reported revenue of €1,896 million (+5.3%), supported by growth in convergent offers. Spain, which has been fully consolidated since June 2026, generated revenue of €1,910 million (+3.5% on a comparable basis), on the back of strong growth in equipment sales. France reported revenue of €4,363 million (+0.5%), while Orange Business reported revenue of €1,717 million (-2.5%).

During the quarter, MasOrange was renamed Orange España. Orange reiterated that the joint acquisition of SFR with Bouygues Telecom and Free–iliad, announced in a memorandum of understanding signed on June 6, 2026, remains on track to close in the second half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and pending rulings in proceedings brought by the Altice France works council. In October 2026, the company signed a letter of intent with Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, and Vodafone to explore a joint bid for mobile satellite services (MSS) spectrum in Europe. In Poland, its FiberCo with APG completed the acquisition of Nexera, while Totem's tenancy ratio reached its 2026 target of 1.5 tenants per site.

IDC Survey: Canadian Consumer Wireline Services Survey Results, 2026 — Indicators on Internet Services Trends

Praveen Datta — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey highlights data associated with the consumer responses to an annual survey by IDC Canada's consumer research group. The August/September 2026 survey of ~2,000 Canadian consumers was conducted to understand the current and future adoption plans for a variety of consumer services and related products. The goal of these surveys is to identify/measure Canadian consumer interest, ownership, usage, satisfaction, and future potential for consumer services.

IDC asked Canadian consumers about their adoption of internet access services. Consumers were asked to relate their satisfaction with and likelihood to recommend their internet service provider. They were also asked whether they planned to increase, maintain, or decrease their level of internet service and why they would decrease for those who would. In addition, Canadian consumers were asked what speed of internet service they currently subscribe to and whether they would be interested to switch providers to increase their internet speed and whether they would be willing to pay more to increase their bandwidth. Consumers were also asked to indicate where they believed problems with their Wi-Fi were occurring and whether they would be interested in fee-based services that improved their W-Fi service.

Cuts by various demographic and service factors (age group, gender, and internet service provider) are shown where relevant. However, there is more data available from the survey than what is presented in this document. Those interested should reach out to their IDC representative for more information.

IDC Survey: How Concerned Are Consumers About the Memory Crunch?

Ramon T. Llamas — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey examines how concerned consumers are about memory shortage and its impact on new smartphone prices. The memory shortage raises a practical question for the smartphone market: How will consumers react if prices go up? This survey explores the price increase at which consumers would pause a purchase and how their buying behavior would change if this increase takes place. It also compares views by region, smartphone brand, and type of smartphone user. For anyone planning around smartphone demand, it offers a look at how buyers may respond.

IDC Survey: How Does Retail Technology Adoption Vary Across Regions?

Margot Juros, Cristiano Quattrini — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey examines how retail technology priorities, challenges, and investment strategies vary across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific.

The document highlights where regional agendas converge on customer experience (CX), operational efficiency, AI, data, cloud, security, and resilience while showing how retailers differ in how they sequence and apply these investments. It explores regional patterns in agentic AI adoption, commerce and CX technologies, store operations, supply chain modernization, infrastructure, edge computing, cybersecurity, and connectivity, providing a comparative view of how retailers are shaping their technology strategies in response to different market and operational pressures.

IDC’s Worldwide Smart Home Device Tracker Taxonomy, 2026

Wed, 04 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC study provides a comprehensive overview and definitions for smart home devices. The definitions provided in this document represent the scope of IDC’s smart home devices hardware research.

This taxonomy outlines market segmentations and measurement methodologies for the smart home devices industry, including classification by technology, vendor, geography, and revenue metrics.

“IDC’s worldwide smart home devices taxonomy presents a standardized and detailed framework of the smart home devices market,” said Ryan Reith, program vice president for IDC’s Mobile Device Trackers. “The taxonomy document serves as a guideline to better understand and use IDC’s wearable devices research.”

Salesforce's 2Q27 Fiscal Results: Continued Momentum Builds the Path to Sustained Innovation

Wed, 04 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note highlights some of the key takeaways and IDC's perspective on Salesforce's 2Q27 financial results.

"As Salesforce shifts its revenue model from seats to outcomes and folds Fin's real-time customer data into agentic action, the vendors that win won't be the ones with the most agents," says Aly Pinder, research vice president, Aftermarket Services Strategies, IDC. "They'll be the ones whose agents can prove they resolved something a customer actually cared about."

Comcast 3Q26 Earnings: Convergence and Cost Transformation Aim to Ease Broadband Pressure as Business Services Growth Slows

Harsheeta Arora — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Comcast announced its 3Q26 financial results on October 22, 2026, reporting revenue of $29.3 billion, down 6.1% year over year (YoY) from $31.2 billion. On a pro forma basis, which adjusts for the separation of Versant (completed on January 2, 2026) and the sale of Sky operations in Germany (completed on May 31, 2026), revenue increased 0.5%. Connectivity & Platforms revenue declined 2.7% to $19.7 billion, while Content & Experiences revenue increased 6.5% to $10.5 billion.

Adjusted EBITDA was $9.1 billion, down 5.8% YoY and up 0.8% on a pro forma basis. Connectivity & Platforms adjusted EBITDA declined 4.4% to $7.6 billion, with a margin of 38.6% compared with 39.3%.