What’s up with… Apple, Alibaba, Airspan

• Apple pledges $500bn US investment during Trump’s term
• Alibaba plans to spend $53bn on AI and cloud computing 
• Airspan snaps up Corning’s small cell unit

In today’s industry news roundup: Apple commits to massive four-year investment cycle in the US; Alibaba decides it’s time to pump tens of billions into AI infrastructure; RAN vendor Airspan snaps up Corning’s small cell unit, which counts AT&T as a customer; and much more!

It seems 2025 is going to be the year of the $500bn tech investment commitment…. Only weeks after the companies behind Project Stargate (SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX) genuflected in front of the new US President and pledged to pump that sum into US AI infrastructure over the next four years, Apple has announced its “largest-ever spend commitment,” with plans to invest more than $500bn in the US during the next four years. That works out at more than $10bn per month. “This new pledge builds on Apple’s long history of investing in American innovation and advanced high-skilled manufacturing, and will support a wide range of initiatives that focus on artificial intelligence, silicon engineering, and skills development for students and workers across the country,” noted the iPhone maker. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, stated: “We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our long-standing US investments with this $500bn commitment to our country’s future. From doubling our Advanced Manufacturing Fund, to building advanced technology in Texas, we’re thrilled to expand our support for American manufacturing. And we’ll keep working with people and companies across this country to help write an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation.” Could it also be that Apple is worried about the future cost of importing technology from countries hit by trade tariffs by the Trump administration? Apple did at least go on to provide the scope of its investments, which covers every aspect of its operations. “The $500bn commitment includes Apple’s work with thousands of suppliers across all 50 states, direct employment, Apple Intelligence infrastructure and datacentres, corporate facilities, and Apple TV+ productions in 20 states. Apple remains one of the largest US taxpayers, having paid more than $75bn in US taxes over the past five years, including $19bn in 2024 alone,” the company added, clearly expecting some sort of gratitude for not maximising its tax avoidance potential. Apple goes into much more detail about its plans and spread of investments in this press release. Keep in mind, though, that in its most recent full financial year (the 12 months to 28 September 2024), Apple reported revenues of $391bn, operating costs of $57.5bn, and net profit of $93.8bn. It’s loaded. 

News of Apple’s corporate largesse came as it found itself at the heart of a data privacy storm in the UK, where the company has withdrawn its support for end-to-end encryption for UK users – a capability enabled by Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP) function, which has now been discontinued for users in Britain – following demands for access to Apple user data from the UK government, reports The Guardian.   

Apple isn’t the only tech powerhouse flexing its financial muscle: Chinese tech giant Alibaba, which was founded by the reportedly back-in-favour Jack Ma, has issued a stock market update to announce it “plans to invest at least RMB380bn (US$53bn) over the next three years to advance its cloud computing and AI infrastructure, reinforcing its commitment to long-term technological innovation and underscoring the company’s focus on AI-driven growth and its role as a leading global cloud provider.” The move is a major change of heart for Alibaba – it noted in an official company blog published on Monday that the sum “exceeds Alibaba’s total AI and cloud spending over the past decade”. The news comes only days after Alibaba announced its fiscal third-quarter results, for the three months to 31 December 2024: The Chinese tech giant reported revenues of $38.4bn, up 8% year on year, and an 83% increase in operating profit to $5.65bn. In his third-quarter earnings commentary, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu described AI as a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity, with artificial general intelligence (AGI) as the company’s primary long-term objective. Alibaba is one of the leading companies in the global cloud services sector, which is growing like wildfire thanks to the increasing use of AI, but commands a market share of about 4% of the $330bn global market and is still relatively small compared with US hyperscalers Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, which command market shares of 30%, 21% and 12%, respectively, according to the latest market analysis by Synergy Research Group – see Cloud services sector topped $330bn in 2024.

Radio access network (RAN) systems vendor and Open RAN fan Airspan Networks, which dragged itself out of bankruptcy protection late last year with a new owner and financing, has struck a deal to acquire Corning’s small cells unit for an undisclosed sum. Corning, of course, is best known as a fibre company, rather than a wireless infrastructure vendor, but back in 2017 it acquired in-building small cell tech developer SpiderCloud Wireless and has kept that part of its portfolio running and relevant ever since… so much so, in fact, that the products were among those selected by AT&T as radio unit options as part of its current Open RAN rollout. By the end of the first quarter, that small cell portfolio, and that AT&T engagement, will be under the Airspan banner. The rejuvenated vendor noted that as “the buildout of outdoor 5G wireless networks reach completion, Airspan expects mobile operators, venue owners and enterprises to step-up their investment in providing high-quality 5G service indoors. This acquisition positions Airspan as [a] leading supplier in this growth market. The acquired business comes with a highly regarded product portfolio with over 10,000 installations, relationships with major mobile operators, public venues, and enterprise customers, a seasoned team, and a broad patent portfolio assembled over 15 years.”  

French satellite giant Eutelsat has teamed up with chip vendor MediaTek and Airbus Defence and Space to conduct what it claims to be “the world’s first successful trial of 5G non-terrestrial network (NTN) technology”. The tests, which were conducted using the Eutelsat OneWeb low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation, “pave the way for deployment of the 5G NTN standard, which will result in future satellite and terrestrial interoperability within a large ecosystem, lowering the cost of access and enabling the use of satellite broadband for 5G devices around the world,” stated Eutelsat. Read more. 

Philippines telco Globe Telecom is testing Nokia’s Network Exposure Platform (NEP) as part of its plan to provide banks and other enterprises in the south-east Asia country with enhanced security through the use of network application programming interfaces (APIs). “With cyberattacks on banking services accelerating, it is crucial that we make available the latest network-powered technologies to our enterprise customers and help them safeguard against fraud,” noted Joel Agustin, Globe’s head of service planning and engineering. “We are now at the stage of testing how Nokia’s NEP can support our customers in the banking and enterprise sectors with security verification tools to prevent fraudulent transactions,” added Agustin. Network API strategies are set to be a major topic at this year’s MWC25 event in Barcelona. Globe Telecom recently announced its full year financials, which highlighted the ongoing success of the telco’s digital services strategy – see Has Globe Telecom found a digital services sweet spot?

– The staff, TelecomTV