Wireless Watch 661: Broadcom buys Brocade for $5.9bn

Key Issues:

• Broadcom buys Brocade for $5.9bn, may regret ditching Ruckus and IP 2
• Two Forums address operators’ growing impatience about pace of NFV 7

Comment:

• Verizon finds an unusual ally in its mmWave efforts – Google 14
• Sprint launch gives Google’s faltering RCS efforts a boost 16
• UK’s 5GIC makes big promises for its flat distributed cloud platform 20
• Mobile video advertising propels Facebook to record quarter 23
• Movidius makes latest move in AI camera wars, ahead of Intel takeover 25
• Ballmer unrepentant about pushing Microsoft into mobile devices 26

M&A Watch:

Lattice acquisition leaves Xilinx the last FPGA man standing 27

Multiplay Watch:

T-Mobile Netherlands to acquire Vodafone’s broadband business 28

4G Watch:

Airhop and Accelleran cooperate on ultra-dense small cells 29

IoT Watch:

Latest Ubuntu Core release aims to enable millions of IoT devices 30

Mobile Content and Applications:

Africa’s mobile video explosion provides major opportunity for Facebook 31

Devices and Components:

ARM pushes forward with mobile AR/VR 33