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SAP Sapphire 2026: The Autonomous Enterprise Vision Unveiled

Aly Pinder, Nadia Ballard — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note summarizes key takeaways and notable product announcements from SAP Sapphire 2026, held on May 11 to 13, 2026, in Orlando, Florida.

The Rise of the Niche MVNO: How Brands Are Becoming Telcos in Europe

Alejandro Cadenas — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note analyzes the proliferation of brand-led MVNOs in Europe, using some recent evidence. Falling deployment costs, driven by eSIM, cloud-native cores, and API-based MVNE platforms, are turning connectivity into an embedded feature of consumer brands, mapping the EU and national regulatory conditions that determine where the model works, and assessing the commoditization threat facing incumbent MNOs and communications SPs.

"The barriers that once made mobile connectivity the exclusive domain of network operators have fallen, with a growing set of consumer brands stepping into the resulting space. For incumbent MNOs and communications SPs, the strategic imperative is clear: Evolve into agile, programmable connectivity platforms, or accept a progressively commoditized role as ownership of the customer relationship shifts elsewhere," says Alejandro Cadenas, Associate Vice President of Telco Research at IDC.

Unification of Traditional and Digital Advertising Management for the Media Industry, 2026

Alex Holtz — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective maps out how broadcasters and publishers can integrate sales, traffic, audience data, monetization, delivery, measurement, reconciliation, and finance into one system rather than running each screen as a separate business. The document shows how traffic and billing vendors are converging from broadcast and digital directions, why reconciliation remains the leading source of revenue error, and how self-service advertising and social commerce extend revenue beyond the traditional ad sale, and then closes with guidance for technology leaders evaluating platforms across the stack.

"Broadcasters and publishers already run every piece of the workflow; the problem is that they run it across seven or more disconnected systems that rarely agree on the same number. Reconciliation is where that gap shows up first, and it is the cheapest place to fix. Self-service and social commerce are new revenue channels nobody was collecting five years ago." — Alex Holtz, research director, Worldwide Media and Entertainment Digital Strategies, IDC

市场份额：中国企业级AI数字人市场份额，2025

Anne Cheng — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

本IDC研究分析了2025年中国企业级AI数字人市场中领先厂商的市场份额。

在生成式AI和大模型技术的双重驱动下，AI数字人赛道迎来突破性发展。首先，技术架构全面升级，头部厂商依托语义和垂直领域大模型，构建起新一代数字人技术栈，使特定场景的交互体验实现质的飞跃。其次，多模态能力持续突破，表情生成、动作捕捉、语音合成、视觉理解等关键技术模块通过超大规模预训练，推动数字人在形象塑造、智能交互和自主决策等方面达到新高度。最后，应用生态加速普及，随着技术平民化进程加快，数字人开发和使用门槛显著降低，预示着"全民数字人"时代的加速到来。这一趋势将彻底改变人机交互范式，重塑数字经济发展格局。

IDC中国AI和大数据领域研究经理程荫表示："在多模态大模型和智能体技术的双重驱动下，数字人在形象塑造、智能交互和自主决策等方面达到新高度。AI数字人作为前端UI入口，通过自主思考决策与多智能体调度，加速普及AI数字人应用生态——随着技术平民化进程加快，数字人开发和使用门槛显著降低，轻量化2D数字人普及直播、智能客服等场景，成本持续下探带动中小企业批量落地。"

The Mixed Enterprise Estate: Managing Platforms over Hardware in 2026

Gala Spasova — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation examines how the enterprise meeting room market has matured from hardware-led deployment to platform-led operations, and what that shift means for vendors and CIOs in 2026. It focuses on a practical question now facing many leaders: How do you run a blended, multiplatform estate as a single operational system when ownership is spread across multiple teams?

Using the mixed enterprise estate as its organizing lens, the presentation traces how priorities have evolved from installing rooms to managing them, and now to governing and orchestrating them at scale. It outlines the implications for vendor positioning, procurement, and the broader direction of the intelligent workplace market.

Fairy Devices and Daikin Industries Advance AI Use of Industrial Field Data

Go Suzuki, Sarah Lee — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Grocery and General Merchandise Retail: Converging Pressures and Distinctive Technology Priorities

Filippo Battaini — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective is the first in a four-part series on technology priorities in retail subverticals. Drawing on IDC’s 2026 Retail Technologies & Business Process Trends Survey, it shows how grocery and general merchandise convert shared pressures, cost inflation, digital-native competition, and rising customer expectations into different agendas (grocery focuses on supply chain visibility and traceability, and general merchandise on customer experience, loss prevention, and order management) and gives technology buyers segment-specific guidance for prioritizing vendor investment over the next two years.

“Grocery and general merchandise retailers are reading from the same macroeconomic script, but writing distinctive technology playbooks; vendors who treat the two segments identically will misjudge both,” says Filippo Battaini, Research Manager, IDC Retail Insights.

IDC MarketScape: U.S. Patient Engagement and Enablement Technology Solutions 2026 Vendor Assessment

Jennifer Eaton — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study assesses the U.S. patient engagement and enablement technology market and the vendors that serve it. Patient engagement has moved from a set of add-on tools to a working part of how providers and payers manage cost, quality, and the relationship with the people they serve. Three forces are driving that shift. Patients now expect the digital convenience they get from other industries. Value-based and outcomes-based payment ties revenue to results that depend on reaching and activating patients. And new interoperability rules, together with more capable AI, are putting more usable data within reach while raising expectations for how quickly and clearly organizations communicate with patients and members. Digital access, remote monitoring, multichannel outreach, education, and AI-driven personalization are becoming standard rather than distinguishing features, and the organizations that succeed are the ones that use them to reach people through the channels they actually use.

The study evaluates vendors on the capabilities and strategies that serve both providers and payers while delivering the consumer-grade experience patients expect. It gives technology buyers a factual basis for comparing solutions, separating shipped capability from road map, and matching a vendor's orientation, whether payer rooted, provider facing, or consumer first, to their own populations and goals.

"Healthcare organizations can no longer treat patient engagement and enablement as a siloed, 'one size fits most' effort aimed at marketing and brand loyalty, and they cannot start and stop with a care encounter or an enrollment window. Engagement has to be continuous, proactive, personalized, and grounded in data that follows the person across their care. The tools and the data to do this now exist, and federal policy is pointing the same way, so the question for 2026 is not whether to build data-driven, whole-person engagement but how quickly an organization can. Patients need it, deserve it, and increasingly expect it." — Jennifer Eaton, research director, IDC Health Insights

Retail Marketplace Platforms as Learning Ecosystems: Using AI to Enable Sellers, Partners, and Digital Commerce Growth

Cristiano Quattrini — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses how retail marketplace platforms are becoming broader commercial and operational ecosystems. Their value is shaped by the ability of sellers, partners, internal teams, and store associates to work effectively within a shared model of customer experience, operational quality, and commercial growth.

Learning is central to this model. It helps sellers activate faster, publish higher-quality content, maintain better availability, improve fulfillment, use retail media more effectively, and build stronger long-term relationships with the retailer. It also helps internal teams support marketplace participants with greater consistency and insight.

AI can make this learning model more responsive and scalable. It can provide trusted knowledge at the point of need, connect guidance with live workflows, identify capability gaps from performance data, and support continuous improvement across the marketplace ecosystem.

Retailers that develop their marketplace platforms as learning ecosystems can create stronger seller relationships, more reliable customer experience, more effective digital commerce operations, and a more durable foundation for marketplace growth.

“Retail marketplaces create lasting value when they actively develop the capabilities of every participant. AI can turn the marketplace into a continuous learning environment, giving sellers and partners timely guidance, operational insight, and confidence needed to improve customer experience, grow digital commerce, and build stronger long-term ecosystem relationships.” — Cristiano Quattrini, senior associate advisor, IDC Retail Insights

AI Rewrites the Optical Network Investment Playbook

Ajeet Das — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note explores how AI is fundamentally reshaping the optical network investment landscape. AI-driven bandwidth demand is now the primary force shaping optical network investments, as operators shift from routine upgrades to structural changes focused on AI and edge datacenter interconnects. Over the next three years, the market will see a leap in network capacity, with 6T becoming the dominant tier and bypassing incremental upgrades. Vendors and service providers must align their strategies with this rapid transition to capture emerging opportunities in AI- and edge-driven optical infrastructure.

"AI isn't just driving optical network investment; it's rewriting the entire playbook, forcing operators to leap generations into capacity planning." — Ajeet Das, research director, Telcom Network Infrastructure, IDC