MWC 2026: Shifting the Narrative from Connecting Things to Empowering Things
- Nordic Semiconductor unveiled the nRF92 series, a small integrated low-power cellular IoT solution.
- MediaTek announced that it staged the world’s first 5G Advanced CPE device with Wi-Fi 8.
- Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear™ Elite enables on-device Agentic AI via NPU.
- Qualcomm brings on-premises industrial AI and connectivity to a Siemens factory model at MWC Barcelona.
- Quectel and MediaTek showcased their latest 5G Advanced and Wi-Fi 8 intelligent CPE architecture.
MWC 2026’s ‘The IQ Era’ signals the end of the AI hype cycle and the beginning of the Edge-native revolution. The focus has shifted to Ede AI, where intelligence lives on the chip, not in the cloud. By moving processing to the local edge, companies are finally delivering the zero-latency responsiveness required for mission-critical IoT.
Here are the top Edge AI and IoT-related announcements from MWC 2026:
Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF92 Series
Nordic unveiled its next-gen cellular IoT portfolio featuring the nRF92 Series. This is a small chip that integrates a high-performance application MCU and ultra-low-power Edge AI via Nordic’s Axon NPUs. Target applications include smart meters, trackers, labels, industrial sensors, and wearables, all engineered to perform complex AI inference locally while maintaining multi-year battery life. It also supports LTE-M/NB-IoT and Satellite NTN (Non-Terrestrial Networks) for global IoT coverage. Sampling is currently underway with a general release set for early 2027.
MediaTek ‘AI For Life’ and Dimensity 9500
MediaTek showcased its vision for a ‘Personal Device Cloud,’ where AI agents collaborate across family devices. Its new Dimensity 9500 mobile platform uses a high-performance NPU to power on-device generative AI, ensuring data privacy by keeping processing at the edge rather than the cloud.
MediaTek's latest AI glasses leverage the Dimensity 9500’s NPU to enable high-speed, local processing in tandem with smartphones. By integrating the Omni multimodal large model, the wearable supports seamless text, image, speech, and video inputs, ensuring low-latency interaction without compromising user privacy.
Qualcomm's Agentic AI Ecosystem
Qualcomm shifted its focus toward Agentic AI, where devices not just respond to prompts but act autonomously. The company demonstrated how edge-based AI agents can manage complex IoT environments, such as smart homes or factories, without needing constant instructions or cloud connectivity.
The Snapdragon Wear™ Elite platform integrates an NPU to handle complex AI processing locally. This architecture enables low-latency, personalized interactions across diverse IoT form factors, from smart pendants, pins to watches. With a robust ecosystem including Samsung, Google, and Motorola, the Elite platform is set to offer power-efficient, on-device AI.
Qualcomm Technologies and Siemens have integrated Edge AI and Private 5G to power next-generation factory workflows. Utilizing the Qualcomm® Cloud AI 100 Accelerator, Siemens industrial PCs now deliver local AI for worker assistance, diagnostics, quality inspection, and safer, smarter factory workflows. This setup eliminates cloud latency, ensuring that AGV navigation and quality inspections happen on-premises and in real-time.
Quectel and MediaTek Unveil the Next-generation FWA CPE
Quectel’s RG660MK series modules, powered by the MediaTek T930 4nm chipset, have been engineered for high-demand residential and industrial applications. This module integrates a Release 18-compliant 5G-A modem, a quad-core CPU, and a dedicated NPU for Edge AI processing. With seamless Wi-Fi 8 collaboration, this architecture provides maximum throughput and ultra-low latency for the next generation of 5GA FWA CPE.
These announcements highlight a shift toward integrated edge AI for IoT in telecom, automotive, personal and industrial use cases.
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Author
Tina Lu
Tina has extensive consulting and analysis experience across a number of industry sectors including more than 14 years in the technology industry. Before Counterpoint, Tina spent more than 9 years in Nokia working in multiple roles and geographic regions. Tina also worked in brand and product marketing for Bestfoods-Unilever and BGH. Tina holds an MBA degree from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.