Infobip is doubling down on its Voice portfolio in North America, rolling out strengthened Branded Calling ID (BCID™) capabilities as enterprises scramble to restore customer trust in an era dominated by spam calls, spoofed numbers, and caller ID fraud. With robocall scams surging across the U.S., the company aims to give brands a verified, trustworthy way to reach customers—before they stop answering altogether.

While consumers everywhere deal with unwanted calls, Americans experience the worst of it. Talker Research reports that the U.S. receives nearly twice as many fraudulent calls as other regions. Morning Consult adds that over three-quarters of Americans simply ignore incoming calls now. For brands that rely on voice as a critical engagement channel, that trend is a revenue killer.

And that’s where Infobip wants to make its mark.

Restoring Trust in Voice Calls

Infobip already supports more than 3,000 Voice customers worldwide, including brands like Uber, LG, and Mercado Libre. Its Voice stack is built for secure, compliant communication across global markets—even those riddled with regulatory barriers.

The company says branded calling is no longer optional. As voice fraud rises, businesses risk losing customer access, loyalty, and billions in potential revenue.

“Voice remains essential across the customer journey, but the spike in scams is pushing consumers away,” said Mijo Soldin, VP of Telecom Strategy and Partnerships at Infobip. He notes that companies failing to adopt BCID are already losing consumer confidence. Infobip’s goal is to simplify deployment and help rebuild reputational trust.

BCID allows enterprises to display verified details—brand name, logo, call reason, and other metadata—before a recipient even answers. The idea is simple: if people recognize who’s calling, they’re more likely to pick up.

Strengthening the Infrastructure Behind BCID

Infobip has spent the past year modernizing its U.S. voice backbone. After finalizing its acquisition of Peerless Network, the company now covers 98% of the U.S. with its nationwide voice network—critical for delivering fast, verified, end-to-end branded calling.

It also expanded its partnership with NumHub to integrate BCID directly into its Voice product suite. The result: enterprise brands can control, verify, and protect their caller identity at scale.

To accelerate adoption further, Infobip is collaborating with leading American telecom providers. The goal? Strip out the complexity that has historically slowed branded calling rollout.

“Branded Calling ID restores confidence by providing trusted caller information,” said Tom Sawanobori, SVP and CTO at CTIA. “Infobip is a valuable Authorized Partner in this growing ecosystem.”

Why It Matters Now

Spam calls aren’t slowing down. Fraud tactics are evolving. Consumers are tired.
For brands, the phone remains a high-intent, high-urgency channel—especially in finance, healthcare, logistics, and on-demand services. If customers don’t trust who’s calling, the entire engagement pipeline breaks.

Infobip’s upgraded voice infrastructure, paired with BCID, puts identity verification at the forefront of enterprise communications. It also positions the company competitively alongside other voice authentication and branded calling players expanding across the U.S.

The broader trend: verified identity is becoming the new currency of customer engagement. And Infobip wants to be the vendor making that infrastructure possible at national scale.

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Zenika Singapore is expanding its leadership bench with two major appointments: Seet Teck Kiang as Head of Business and the return of Michael Isvy as Head of Engineering. The dual hires signal a decisive push to scale the company’s AI Multiplier Framework across Asia and strengthen its position as a high-performance AI engineering partner for enterprises.

The move comes as organisations across the region shift from AI experimentation to full-scale AI integration. Zenika wants to position itself as the firm that helps them cross that gap — not with hype, but with disciplined engineering, pragmatic strategy, and cloud-native execution.

Scaling Zenika’s AI Multiplier Framework

Seet Teck Kiang brings more than 20 years of experience across Asia’s enterprise and public sectors. His background spans leadership roles at ThoughtWorks, EPAM Systems, and Zühlke Group, where he drove platform modernisation and complex transformation programmes. At Zenika, he will focus on extending the reach of the company’s AI Multiplier Framework (SHAPE × SHIP × SYNC), a model built to unify product engineering, AI-enabled delivery, and resilient architecture.

Seet says Zenika’s culture of engineering excellence and its structured approach to AI were key reasons behind his decision to join. He sees the framework as a practical path for organisations seeking long-term AI value, rather than short-lived pilots.

Engineering Returns to Its Roots

Zenika is also welcoming back a familiar face.
Michael Isvy — one of the early contributors to Zenika Singapore’s foundation — is returning to lead engineering and AI strategy. His role focuses on scaling augmented development practices, standardising AI workflows, and integrating responsible AI into everyday delivery.

Michael’s career spans both the French craftsmanship tradition and Singapore’s rapid innovation culture. This blend allows him to bridge methodologies and foster cross-border collaboration. His mission is to turn Zenika Singapore into the company’s AI engineering “living lab,” closely connected with technical teams in France.

By operationalising AI at scale, Michael aims to make AI more dependable and accessible for engineers and enterprise clients. His mandate includes accelerating adoption of augmented development, improving efficiency in delivery pipelines, and ensuring that AI remains a value generator rather than a costly experiment.

A Unified Push Toward Regional Expansion

Timothée Dufresne, Managing Director of Zenika Singapore, says the dual appointments position the company for the next decade of growth.

“Seet strengthens our business strategy and regional presence, while Michael elevates our engineering and AI capabilities,” he said. “Together, they will shape the next chapter of Zenika Singapore and Asia.”

With AI investment rising across Southeast Asia — and organisations seeking structured frameworks rather than scattered pilots — Zenika’s sharpened leadership focus comes at the right moment. The company is betting on disciplined engineering, repeatable AI models, and cross-market collaboration as the formula for sustained transformation.

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Global TV shipments are losing steam, and the latest numbers show exactly where the market is breaking. According to Omdia’s new TV Sets Market Tracker, worldwide shipments slipped to 52.5 million units in Q3 2025 — a slight 0.6% drop year-over-year. But that headline number hides a much sharper collapse in one of the world’s biggest markets: China.

The country’s TV shipments plunged 12.2% year-on-year as government subsidies that artificially inflated demand over the past year began to dry up. With many consumers already having upgraded — and with regional funding pools now running on fumes — the surge that once propped up the market is turning into a drag.

China’s Decline Exposes a Subsidy-Fueled Surge

For more than a year, government incentives kept China’s TV demand running hot. But that kind of growth was always going to hit a wall. Once subsidies rolled back, demand followed. Now the market is in corrective mode, with Omdia expecting an extended slowdown as the industry adjusts to more organic consumption levels.

This decline is already reshaping global strategy. Chinese TV giants like Hisense and TCL posted strong year-on-year growth of 11% and 2%, respectively, in Q3 2025 — but maintaining that trajectory at home is no longer feasible. With the local market cooling off, China’s leading brands are accelerating their push into overseas markets.

Omdia Principal Analyst Matthew Rubin notes that Chinese manufacturers have already made significant global gains. Now the downturn at home “will likely accelerate these efforts.” Europe and Asia & Oceania offer the most immediate opportunity, while the U.S. remains trickier due to tariffs and Mexico’s capacity constraints.

North America Defies Expectations, Asia & Oceania Surges

While China contracts, two major regions moved in the opposite direction.

North America posted 2.3% growth despite economic uncertainty and tariff pressure. Consumers continue to upgrade, and demand for mid-range and premium TVs has remained surprisingly resilient.

Asia & Oceania delivered the biggest upside shock with a 7.7% jump — a clear signal that Chinese brands are already leaning harder on neighboring markets to offset domestic losses. Rising disposable incomes, maturing retail channels, and competitive pricing are helping these brands gain rapid traction throughout Southeast Asia and beyond.

Big-Screen Slowdown Complicates Chinese Expansion Strategy

There’s another wrinkle: screen size preferences.

China’s slowdown has hit the large-screen segment hard. Growth in the 80-inch-and-above category nearly halved, dropping from over 40% each quarter during the past year to just 23.1% in Q3 2025. The 70–79 inch range barely grew at all, up only 1.1% year-on-year.

This shift creates a strategic dilemma for big Chinese manufacturers. Their global playbook has leaned heavily on low-cost, large-screen TVs — especially in North America and at home. But in the next wave of regions they’re targeting, consumers prefer much smaller screens.

In China, the average TV size sits at 62.8 inches. In Asia & Oceania, it’s just 45.5 inches. That mismatch means brands must adapt both pricing and product strategies if they want to sustain momentum across emerging markets.

What Comes Next for the Global TV Market?

The third quarter’s results point toward a recalibration rather than a collapse. Global shipments are nearly flat, but the distribution of demand is shifting fast. China’s influence is shrinking, North America is holding firm, and Asia & Oceania is becoming the next battleground for share growth.

Meanwhile, Chinese brands — already international heavyweights — are ramping up their global expansion as their home market cools. They’ll face new challenges in regions with different consumer preferences, regulatory hurdles, and local competition. But if recent performance is any guide, they’re prepared to adapt.

The sector may be entering a slower growth cycle, but the competitive race is far from slowing down. Instead, it’s moving to new regions, new screen sizes, and new strategies — setting the stage for a more complex and globally distributed TV market in 2026 and beyond.

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Artificial intelligence is sweeping across enterprise functions. Yet procurement continues to fall behind, even as pressures mount. New data from SAP Taulia’s AI in Procurement Report shows a widening gap between procurement’s rising workload and leadership’s limited investment.

Only 35% of global leaders see procurement and supply chain management as a priority area for AI investment. Finance, data analytics, and cybersecurity each attract more attention, leaving procurement at a strategic disadvantage.

This mismatch comes at a difficult moment. Procurement teams report heavier demands, tighter risk environments, and growing operational complexity. Yet AI funding remains slow.

Rising Pressures, Slow Progress

Procurement teams feel the strain. Seventy-two percent say demands increased during the past year. They face complex supplier ecosystems, volatile markets, and expanding compliance requirements. Although 44% believe AI will solve many of these challenges, executive prioritization remains low.

Leaders agree on AI’s potential impact. They highlight risk detection, data-led decision-making, and spend analysis as major opportunity areas. They also expect AI to streamline sourcing, accelerate tendering, and automate invoice processing. These improvements could shift procurement toward more strategic work.

However, interest levels vary sharply by region. Just 20% of UK leaders prioritize procurement AI investments, compared with 44% in Australia and 41% in Singapore. U.S. leaders sit at 37%. These gaps show a global function moving at different speeds.

Procurement Teams Use AI, Even Without Leadership Backing

Despite limited investment, procurement teams are not waiting. Many already use AI-powered procurement platforms such as SAP Joule, JAGGAER, and Ivalua. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini are also widely deployed.

This early adoption is paying off. Ninety percent of leaders using AI say automation lets their teams focus on higher-value work. They report stronger supplier relationships, better risk oversight, and more strategic impact. Moreover, 87% say AI insights strengthen procurement’s influence in business decision-making.

These numbers show a function willing to modernize, even when broader enterprise strategy lags behind.

Barriers Slow Enterprise-Wide Adoption

Leadership concerns continue to slow AI uptake. Data security and compliance worries top the list. Limited internal AI expertise and misaligned digital strategies add further friction. Practical issues such as poor data quality and workflow integration uncertainty follow close behind.

A deeper cultural barrier persists. Thirty percent of leaders still view procurement as an operational unit rather than a strategic one. This perception makes investment harder to justify, despite the function’s growing importance.

Experts warn that this mindset puts organizations at risk. Volatile supply chains demand predictive intelligence, not manual firefighting.

Industry Voices Call for Faster Investment

SAP Taulia Chief Product Officer Danielle Weinblatt argues that procurement sits at the center of business resilience. She notes that AI can transform how organizations manage risk, relationships, and working capital. She calls for investment that balances immediate needs with long-term vision.

NTT DATA’s John Roberts reinforces the urgency. He says AI is already elevating procurement from back-office support to a strategic business partner. For him, automation unlocks time for deeper supplier collaboration and stronger risk detection. He warns that procurement cannot afford to fall behind in this new industrial revolution.

TELUS Director of Procurement Ashifa Jumani highlights another key issue: mindset. She says leaders must position AI as an augmentation tool, not a threat. When AI handles repetitive tasks, teams gain time for negotiation, relationship-building, and long-term value creation.

The Road Ahead

Procurement knows where AI can deliver value. Teams are already using tools that enhance performance, reduce risk, and improve decision-making. Yet investment continues to trail behind other functions.

The report reveals a clear paradox. Procurement professionals understand AI’s potential, but many leadership teams remain hesitant. Without a shift in perception, organizations may miss a critical opportunity to strengthen resilience during uncertain times.

The companies that close this gap first will shape the next era of procurement—one defined by intelligence, automation, and strategic influence.

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Applause, the global leader in digital quality engineering and crowdsourced testing, is set to spotlight its expanding AI capabilities at Tech For Retail 2025, happening November 24–25 at the Paris Expo, Porte de Versailles. Now in its fifth year, the event will bring together more than 13,000 retail and tech leaders focused on how generative AI, automation, and data continue to reshape modern commerce.

AI Quality Takes Center Stage

At booth B132, Applause will demo its AI Training and Testing Solution, a fully managed service suite designed to boost the reliability, safety, and accuracy of AI-driven retail experiences. The offering spans fine-tuning, red teaming, model evaluation, bias detection, data sourcing, and UX research — all essential as retailers scale AI across customer service channels, websites, apps, and IVR systems.

With generative AI now embedded in everything from product discovery to shopper support, the pressure to deliver safe, trustworthy outputs is rising. Applause says its platform helps retailers mitigate risks tied to hallucinations, bias, toxic responses, and inconsistent model behavior — issues that can erode customer trust and damage brand equity.

Backed by 1.5 Million Testers Worldwide

Applause supports some of the world’s earliest and largest AI adopters, leveraging a global community of 1.5 million independent testing experts and end-users to validate real-world performance at scale. This human-in-the-loop approach ensures LLMs are trained, evaluated, and refined using diverse, scenario-rich datasets that reflect how actual shoppers behave.

The company’s crowdtesting services are fully managed, giving retailers a combination of strategy, execution, and continuous feedback needed to maintain high-quality omnichannel experiences. Applause partners with leading global retailers to test and optimize websites, apps, payments flows, conversational AI, and accessibility touchpoints long before launch.

Award-Winning Momentum in Retail Tech

The company enters Tech For Retail 2025 with fresh industry recognition. Earlier this year, Applause earned the RetailTech Breakthrough Award for “e-Commerce Infrastructure Solution of the Year” and a Gold Stevie Award for Company of the Year (Computer Software – Large) at the 2025 International Business Awards.

These accolades highlight Applause’s growing influence in retail technology as businesses increasingly demand scalable, high-assurance testing for AI-enabled experiences.

Consumers Leaning Into AI-Assisted Shopping

Adding to its momentum, Applause recently released its 2025 Holiday Shopping & Payments Survey, which shows consumers are warming to AI-assisted shopping while continuing to encounter friction in checkout and payment experiences. Persistent gaps in payment reliability and user experience remain major conversion killers — reinforcing the need for rigorous testing across digital retail ecosystems.

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Clootrack just crossed a threshold that few enterprise AI platforms can claim: more than 100 billion OpenAI tokens processed across its customer base. The milestone signals a shift in how global organizations approach Voice of the Customer (VoC) analytics, pushing beyond dashboards and sentiment scores into real operational impact.

The spike in usage follows two major upgrades. In 2024, Clootrack migrated its patented unsupervised thematic analysis engine to OpenAI. Then, in early 2025, it launched an Agentic Workflow Builder designed specifically for VoC teams. Combined, these enhancements have turned customer feedback—long treated as a noisy afterthought—into a high-resolution decision system.

Clootrack CEO Shameel Abdulla frames the achievement as a trust signal rather than a technical one. “This achievement is not about token volume; it is about trust at scale,” he said. According to Abdulla, enterprises are rebuilding their decision loops around AI, and Clootrack’s accuracy claims of 98% or higher make that shift possible.

And the outcomes are hard to ignore. Brands report double-digit reductions in ecommerce returns, NPS improvements within a single quarter, and threefold acceleration in product development. Contact centers have lowered average handling time by as much as 15%, while some teams cut agent churn by 20%. Private equity firms have even shortened diligence cycles by weeks. These gains illustrate a broader trend: enterprise AI is now graded on business results, not novelty.

Reaching the 100-billion-token mark didn’t come easy. Clootrack rebuilt core algorithms, workflows, and internal development systems to meet enterprise expectations for transparency and control. Abdulla said the team “hit walls almost every day,” but precision remained non-negotiable. The milestone suggests the rebuild paid off.

The platform now blends unsupervised thematic analysis with agentic AI workflows to interpret emotion, context, and intent across 55+ languages and more than 1,000 data sources. Retail giants, SaaS leaders, banks, healthcare providers, and private equity firms rely on Clootrack to unify scattered feedback into real-time intelligence that supports faster decisions and measurable growth.

While many AI-powered CX tools still offer surface-level sentiment snapshots, Clootrack’s trajectory shows where the market is heading. Enterprises want clarity, impact, and systems that scale without breaking. Surpassing 100 billion tokens is less a victory lap and more a preview of what the next generation of customer intelligence will look like.

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Qlik is tightening its grip on the data quality race. The company unveiled a fresh set of AI-powered capabilities in Qlik Talend Cloud, designed to make governed, trusted data easier for enterprises to use wherever work happens. The update offers what many data teams have long wanted: faster publishing, cleaner datasets, and fewer hours swallowed by tedious documentation.

The headline feature is a one-click ability to publish secure, standards-based API endpoints for governed data products. This unlocks a wider ecosystem, letting teams push the same curated data directly into Power BI, Tableau, Excel, Salesforce, and custom internal apps without creating duplicate pipelines. For organizations already drowning in data silos, that alone is a lifeline.

The platform also introduces automated dataset documentation through a feature Qlik calls auto-describe. It generates field-level descriptions at scale, improving data discoverability for business users and eliminating the manual busywork that data stewards have endured for years.

But the biggest productivity kicker may be the AI-powered data quality assistant, which analyzes datasets and proposes validation rules based on their profile. Instead of manually crafting checks, teams can now cover far more scenarios while spending far less time building logic.

Qlik didn’t stop at cleanup tools. The release includes agentic, sprint-style remediation workflows that bring domain experts, analytics leaders, and data stewards together. Rather than funneling issues through endless tickets, teams can collaborate in real time to validate fixes, raise trust, and accelerate delivery.

“Customers want flexibility. If your best data is stuck in one tool, it becomes a bottleneck,” said Drew Clarke, EVP of Product & Technology at Qlik. He emphasized that standards-based APIs reduce friction across the stack, while AI-driven stewardship “removes repetitive tasks and helps teams deliver trusted outcomes faster.”

Eva Chrona, CEO of Climber, put it more bluntly: “Qlik has turned stewardship into a team sport.” Her team has already seen time savings from auto-describe and AI-generated quality checks, and she expects AI-guided workflows to deepen that impact.

Qlik says the new Data Product APIs are available today. Auto-describe and the DQ Rule Assistant are rolling out, and an early access program for enhanced data stewardship features is open now. The move puts Qlik in a strong position as enterprises push for unified, governed data that can move across tools without losing trust—or time.

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Skybeam, Simulmedia’s self-serve TV advertising platform, just made one of the industry’s most stubborn barriers disappear. The company launched Traditional TV Advertising inside its platform, allowing users to run broadcast and cable campaigns alongside streaming—without the old maze of rate cards, ad reps, and minimum budget requirements.

The move brings digital-style simplicity to linear TV, a channel that still commands significant attention. More than 40% of U.S. viewers continue to watch traditional television, especially for local news, primetime entertainment, and live sports. Yet smaller advertisers have rarely been able to tap into that audience because linear TV has long favored large brands with deep pockets and specialized teams.

A Unified Path to Streaming and Linear

Skybeam now positions itself as the first self-serve platform to merge Streaming + Traditional TV buying in one workflow. Users simply pick their market, set a schedule, define a budget, and upload a spot. The platform then handles planning, placement, and optimization—tasks that previously required expertise or expensive intermediaries.

The update leverages Simulmedia’s 15 years of national TV buying experience, turning what used to be a complex transaction into a straightforward campaign setup. For many local advertisers, that shift could unlock audiences they’ve never been able to reach.

Closing the Accessibility Gap

Until now, traditional TV buying created four persistent hurdles:

• Complex negotiations with reps and opaque rate structures

• High entry budgets that sidelined local players

• Limited expertise to plan and optimize linear campaigns

• Fragmentation between streaming and linear buying tools

Skybeam’s streamlined experience removes these friction points and gives local businesses real access to premium TV inventory. It also helps agencies consolidate workflows that previously required juggling multiple vendors.

A Level Playing Field for TV

Simulmedia CEO Dave Morgan described the launch as an overdue shift. “For years, access to traditional TV advertising was limited to large brands with big budgets,” he said. Skybeam now extends that reach to smaller businesses “with the same power and precision we’ve provided national advertisers for over a decade.”

For advertisers still chasing trust and high engagement, traditional TV remains hard to beat. The channel continues to hold some of the most attentive audiences in U.S. media. Skybeam’s update brings that value within reach of local brands that have long viewed TV as off-limits.

The platform is available now. Users can sign up, set up a campaign, and get their brand on-air in the same market as major national advertisers—no negotiations, no contracts, and no steep buy-ins.

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