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Hello, and welcome to the HORIZON weekly newsletter. Particularly warm greetings to our many new subscribers - please do forward this on to colleagues and connections in your network who would also enjoy the insights.
Below you will find some hand-picked fresh thought-leadership content, giving you an overview of recent developments, topical innovations, and what we're seeing and hearing out there towards the digital frontier.
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Recent articles
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Future Chinese chips...and The Smiling Curve concept.
Semiconductor chips; not the potato sort.
Make no mistake: advanced semiconductor chips are powering the next waves of innovation (arguably forthcoming global industrial revolutions).
The Smiling Curve is a graphical depiction that illustrates the conceptual economic value added in different stages of the lifecycle of a product.
By recognising where the most value is added, an entity can make informed decisions for the future to drive sustainable growth and unlock strategic economic opportunities.
In essence, the two extremities of the value chain command higher values than the middle part of the value chain (see pic).
Hence why firms like Apple focus more on design and development at the start plus selling and service at the other end as both are high-value; outsourcing the less valuable fabrication aspect to third-parties.
If a company wants to “own” the entire smile (being vertically-integrated), it means it wants to excel in both high-value creation and also in efficient production assembly.
The Smiling Curve concept was first proposed in the early 1990s by Stan Shih, the founder of Taiwanese computer company Acer.
For a long time China was referred to as "the factory of the world" due to its large manufacturing capacity and low labour costs combining to produce goods at scale, essentially acting as the global manufacturing hub.
The Smiling Curve demonstrates that manufacturing alone, even with high production volumes, captures a smaller share of the overall value.
The Chinese "Tech 2035" policy seeks to change this to become the leader end-to-end in emerging sectors like robotics, electric vehicles, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) - all of which rely on advanced semiconductor chips.
Making chips both smaller and more advanced requires specialist skills and huge sums of capital; yet many key global markets are becoming more restrictive or closed completely due to tariffs and parochial policies.
US-headquartered companies make up in excess of 70% of global chip design software and license revenues.
According to the China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA), in 2010 there were 582 Chinese chip design companies.
As of 2024 there are 3626.
China's chip design industry achieved sales of $90.99 billion in 2024, an increase of 11.9% from the previous year.
China's chip design still shows strong growth potential - as long as focus continues in technological innovation, product quality, market expansion via the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Phase III.
Continued competition between the USA and China in chip design is not just about semiconductor technology but, in effect, shaping what comes next in the volatile and uncertain world of today and tomorrow.
Message us to explore what future strategic insight The Smiling Curve analysis can unlock for your organisation.
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"Use the force": paralysed man pilots drone using brain implant.
Researchers have developed a device that let a 69-year-old fly a virtual drone using only his thoughts, picturing finger movements in his mind.
In the last twenty years the technology linking brains to machines has gone from science fiction theory to tangible reality.
Millions of people globally live with severe physical impairments.
Training using brain implants is increasingly being recognised as a potential solution for restoring movement, increasing quality of life.
A Brain Computer Interface (BCI) links neural signals to fine movements; though in use for over a decade already, they have often faced challenges to replicate complex motor movements such as the digits.
Though invasive and not without risk, researchers believe placing electrodes as close as possible to neurons via an implant is essential to achieve high-function control.
This recent breakthrough was the result of neurosurgeons asking the participant with paralysis to watch the movements of a virtual hand.
Using a 192-electrode BCI into the motor cortex, an algorithm was used to identify and map the electrical brain activity associated with particular finger movements.
This association enables the system to predict desired finger inputs based on patterns, even though the participant cannot physically move his own fingers.
Uniquely, the study separated the fingers into three groups: thumb, pointer and middle finger, plus ring finger and pinky.
In total, the system provides four degrees of freedom: forwards and backwards, left and right, up and down, and horizontal rotation.
The patient, a man who became quadriplegic after sustaining a devastating spine injury, has a passion for flying.
After training, as well as moving each finger group the BCI also detected desire to stretch, curl, or move his thumb side to side, letting him pilot the drone as if using a video game controller.
Thus the patient can unlock unprecedented precision over speed and direction in a bespoke video-game obstacle course, even moving through randomly appearing rings in real-time (see pic).
The participant expressed how the task was an effective mental workout they enjoyed, and that it required great focus (not unlike that needed while playing a musical instrument).
Perhaps a real rather than virtual drone may be next?
Individual training for every user is needed, necessitating a unique algorithm per patient - plus training must be repeated over time as functionality declines (possibly as the brain itself changes as we age).
In the near term, further advancements could lead to better implants helping paralysed people move on-screen cursors, enabling more typical device control and allow them to write messages, or scroll social media.
More broadly, in the future it could restore autonomous physical control to the lives of people with paralysis when combined with advanced robotics.
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Around the corner.
Microsoft has announces a Quantum computing breakthrough, unveiling the Majorana 1 processor; here's the takeaways you need to know.
Though this emerging tech remains relatively nascent, Quantum has seen flurry of recent announcements of positive progress (once you sieve through all the foamy AI headlines).
Reaching the next horizon of Quantum computing will require a Quantum architecture that can provide a million qubits or more and reliably reach trillions of operations fast.
According to Microsoft, this announcement puts that horizon within years rather than decades.
Qubits are a unit of information that are different from the binary bits that traditional chips use today.
Qubits store and process information in ways classical computers could never dream of, and revolutionary topological superconductors (or "topoconductors") allow for the formation of qubits.
Historically, the pace of Quantum maturity has been hobbled by technical issues around qubits being delicate; they are more sensitive and susceptible to noise which leads to computation errors.
The new palm-sized chip can potentially accommodate those million qubits - enabling highly accurate simulations that could lead to advancements in fields like health (new medicines) and science (self-healing materials).
Majorana 1, the first Quantum chip from Microsoft and also the first in the world to be powered by topoconductors, harnesses a mere eight qubits.
Its thus today capable of merely solving mathematical problems which prove it can be controlled consistently...but it can and will be scaled up.
After a development quest of over twenty years (Microsoft started its Quantum work in 2004), research has led to the development of the world's first topoconductor material made from indium arsenide and aluminium.
It therefore marks a significant new path in the Quantum arms race by creating a potentially transformative architecture, with more reliable qubits using Majorana particles at the hardware layer.
Majorana are quasiparticles, named after the physicist Ettore Majorana who initially theorised about them as far back as 1937.
Microsoft believes Majorana qubits will prove to be less prone to inadvertent flips between ones and zeros than qubits created by other approaches, thus minimising errors and increasing reliability of output(s).
An early endorsement comes from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) selecting Microsoft to advance its scalable Quantum efforts by building a fault-tolerant prototype based on topological qubits.
In time, Quantum computing may be able to unlock the potential to truly solve industrial and global-scale problems such as sustainable agriculture, or climate change.
A Quantum-powered future could be the road ahead of us, and the horizon is now a little closer.
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Thank-you for reading and being part of our community - we trust you find these original pieces on emerging technology and digital innovation useful, valuable, and thought-provoking as we bridge the gap between today and what future tech might bring tomorrow in Plain English.
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