Summary Bullets:

• A survey of 2,585 Amazon staffers conducted by Blind, an anonymous social media platform, reported that 91% are dissatisfied with the new five-day in-office policy.
• Separate Blind research involving employees from multiple companies found 65% are anxious about return to office (RTO) orders.

If there was any upside to the 2020 COVID 19-driven lockdown, the overnight move to remote work granted many corporate employees a new work from home perk. The move eliminated difficult and often costly commutes. Working from home also gave families flexibility to lessen the load in areas like childcare and logistics. But the biggest benefit of working from home might be the gift of time. Many enterprises retained at least hybrid working operations, requiring staff to come in on a limited basis. But now, more than four years after lockdown began, more corporations are calling employees back in the office for the full five days.

Summary Bullets:

• Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Emergence: The number of LEO satellite providers is increasing, with leaders Starlink and OneWeb being joined by newer competitors like AST Space Mobile.

• Operator Opportunity: As LEO ecosystems mature there are many opportunities for operators to partner with LEO providers beyond just basic remote connectivity.

The market for LEO satellite connectivity is rapidly emerging. While in some cases the emergence of LEO might be seen as a competitive threat to traditional telco business there are many emerging opportunities for network operators to partner with LEO providers.

Summary Bullets:

• Qualcomm and Intel are big players in delivering the semiconductors that are used worldwide every day.

• There are significant financial considerations as to how Qualcomm could possibly finance a purchase as large as Intel.

Recently, it’s been reported that Qualcomm is in the early stages of negotiations to buy out Intel. Intel has been suffering from disappointing financial performance and has been restructuring the company as well as opening its fabrication plants to third parties. Intel has recently announced that it will be separating its fabrication business from the rest of Intel as part of its reaction to continued poor financial performance. Its recent travails have in part been caused by its being late to the party for chips designed for use in AI systems (more specifically GPUs), unlike chip rival Nvidia. Intel has also suffered from competition from long-time rival AMD in both the desktop and server market.