Last week, MediaTek hosted its annual Analyst Day event in Austin, TX to discuss the company’s key growth areas and strategy for the future. While we can’t share everything we learned throughout a day of detailed presentations, roundtables, and 1:1 interviews with executives, MediaTek’s plans for diversifying its business across vertical markets and geographies has already been on full public display.

At this year’s RSA Conference in San Francisco, artificial intelligence was the hot topic. On one hand, industry participants were concerned about the potential of AI, for example, to write better malware or craft more effective phishing emails. On the other hand, vendors were positioning themselves to leverage AI to improve cybersecurity defenses. AI has become an impetus in an escalating cyber arms race between attackers and defenders.

Manufacturers of DTC wearables have begun to seek blended device approval, gaining FDA clearance for certain features within their devices without going through the lengthier process of seeking complete clearance or approval of the entire device. Whether or not a consumer wearable requires any level of FDA regulation depends on its intended use. General wellness products, such as step counters or fitness trackers, are outside the scope of FDA regulation. However, when devices begin to make claims of diagnosing, monitoring, or treating medical conditions, they fall under the definition of a medical device. Learn more

Manufacturers of medical devices face a plethora of regulatory standards from multiple entities and agencies. ISO 13485, IEC 62304, and UL 2900 are just some of the international standards that regulate all levels of the medical device supply chain, addressing key requirements such as quality and risk. While the FDA previously relied upon suggested best practices for the cybersecurity of medical devices in the form of guidelines, the agency has recently taken a far more proactive approach to regulation. Learn more

Originally developed as a research project at UC Berkeley in 2010, the RISC-V ISA has since sparked a considerable amount of interest and use in captive and merchant/commercial processing applications. In 2015, the non-profit RISC-V Foundation was created to establish an open-source development network for this new ISA. Developers across the world expressed their interests in the RISC-V platform, which eventually sparked the incorporation of the RISC-V Foundation in Switzerland in March 2020, which is now called RISC-V International today. Learn more

Last week, VDC Research attended the Embedded World 2023 conference in Nuremberg, Germany and held dozens of face-to-face meetings with exhibitors. Following a barren 2020 and relatively muted attendance last year, Embedded World 2023 was a clear indication that this industry is a small step away from back to normal conference and tradeshow attendance and activities. The halls were packed and bustling like times of old, with everyone sharing a sense of relief and rejuvenated appreciation for in-person events, meetings, and connections. Learn more

Athletic organizations across the world have begun to view IoT devices and the data they can glean from them as an important factor in optimizing player performance, mitigating injuries, and increasing fan engagement. Learn more

VDC’s IoT staff was back in Barcelona for MWC for the first time since 2019. This year’s attendance continued to rebound from the COVID pandemic, and was 88,500 participants, compared to 61,000 in 2022, after the 2019 peak of nearly 109,500. Learn more

Automotive cybersecurity is set to become a key feature in software-defined vehicles, with a variety of standards emerging to ensure the safety and security of connected vehicles. Functional safety standards, such as ISO 26262, have been implemented across the automotive industry, but cybersecurity has only recently been addressed. Both safety and security play an important role in securing various imbedded systems, and satisfying different functional safety standards increasingly requires proportional investments in security. Learn more

Software development will be a key battleground for the automotive industry in order to support the push towards autonomous vehicles (AV). A focus on automation, connectivity, electrification and sharing will drive automotive trends forward and significantly influence software development. A standard software architecture is necessary for mitigating the largest obstacle to the development and growth of the connected vehicle industry, which is the complexity of automotive systems (see Exhibit 1). Learn more