First impressions count – and the trains are late, the stairs are broken, and the food is wrong. This is not the fabled German efficiency we came here to discuss – and see projected into the digital age across 17 cavernous halls of the Hanover fairgrounds. Between the rail delays (industrial action; about to ground flights home, also), the escalator dodge (industrial maintenance; neither predictive, nor productive), and the burger switcheroo (“But I ordered a McCrispy…”), we went looking for 5G in the home of Industrie 4.0… and we hardly found it at all.
Does Hannover Messe (April 17-21), the biggest industrial tech show on the planet, care about 5G? Not much, in the scheme of things. This was the early verdict, coming off the train from Hamburg at the west entrance last week, and winding a path through energy and mobility solutions in halls 13, 12, 11, before crossing over and turning left to join the mega stands in hall 9, where Siemens held court, and on through a labyrinth of industrial automation solutions in halls 8, 7, 6, 5… before deciding to look at a floor plan. Hall 14 was where the 5G action was; but hall 14 was dead.
First impressions, like I say; it was early on the first day, and the south entrance would have provided more direct access to the 5G Arena, where the 5G-ACIA, the cross-sector lobby group for industrial-grade cellular, had sought with Deutsche Messe to convene an excitable 5G church. But the stands were empty and the stage was vacant; the congregation was late, attending to other gods in the Industry 4.0 firmament. First impressions; this ain’t the same 5G story MWC told a few weeks ago, about how 5G will provide an urgent springboard for industrial change.
Of course, it isn’t; but this first-morning at Hannover Messe, as it was experienced, was telling. Time to kill; maybe a straw poll of machine makers and automation vendors across the way, back in halls 6 and 7, would reveal some kind of truth. What do you make of 5G, really? Do you really care? Have you got any 5G in your kitbag? What’s really up with Industry 4.0? It was a lightning tour, and a grab-bag of responses from conveyor manufacturers, robot operators, and line integrators – which split roughly three ways, as vague shrugs, cautious nods, and something-like enthusiasm.
But even the most positive endorsements, from industrial vendors with embedded 5G solutions, talked about 5G like a future sideshow in the big Industry 4.0 picture. An appointment with AWS halted playtime, and returned us to hall 14, to a busy booth on the opposite flank. (Second impressions.) As it has done recently at other events, AWS set up with partners in Hanover like a festival-within-a-festival; a mini-Messe in the cloud. Why don’t mobile operators – the new tech-cos, they say – do this, and make a show of their deep industrial relations?
Well, because they aren’t here, for starters. (Third.) No Deutsche Telekom, no Vodafone, no Orange; not that we saw. Telefónica was there, somewhere, set apart from the telecoms crowd in hall 14; and Verizon Business and Elisa, notably, had decent showings – across from the 5G Arena, bunched in with the likes of Nokia, Ericsson, Dell, and HPE. But nothing from Deutsche Telekom, the king of the campus network. It was a conspicuous miss, and a difficult one to square with the MWC hullabaloo.
But AWS was there, as was Microsoft and Google Cloud (both in 16, aligned with the IT crowd) – and they were rammed, with partners and visitors. Same question for the vendors; why does Nokia, say, not do the same, with the same fanfare – if it is to captain Industry 4.0? Because these were buzzy booths, which made their hosts out like the king-makers in the supplier market – and which showed that IoT is alive and kicking (!!!); just maybe too-big or too-mad for a hyper-scale cloud vendor that is struggling to serve the growth in its own business. Better to do IoT with partners, said Hannover Messe.
Indeed, if you wanted a grim omen about the power struggle for so-called tech-cos in the Industry 4.0 game, then Siemens’ platinum sponsorship of the AWS booth was as stark as the Deutsche Telekom no-show. And it would have suggested the game’s up, except that Siemens, as is right and proper, also stole the floor-show – with a booth that was so big and so busy that it made your head spin. (Fourth.) And Siemens’ place in the 5G supplier market is informative; it reiterated here that industrial-private 5G is a 2024/25 story, and time is on its side.
It has developed its own private 5G system, and is in no rush to get it out and get it wrong; it is still in testing with unnamed customers. Which sounds – post-MWC, with mergers and acquisitions in the vendor market, and signs of scale in the enterprise space – like a late show. But Siemens is like Paulie in Goodfellas – it may move slow, but only because it doesn’t have to move for anybody. AWS, and certain others, may be the gatekeepers for the Industry 4.0 market, but Siemens, and certain others, will dictate the pace of it. (Fifth.)
All of which (the sub-MWC pace, anyway) was confirmed later by Volkswagen, the biggest car maker in the world, speaking at a panel session at the 5G Arena – where the stands had got lively and the stage had got fiery. Industrial 5G is a “small part” of the Industry 4.0 puzzle, it said; the message was reinforced by updates on its tentative live activity (four proofs, four vendors, four factories) and vague rollout schedule (something is to be formalised, at some point, in the “next months”), and long list of bugbears with the technology (devices, complexity, integration).
Which is probably the place to leave it, for now; interviews from Hannover Messe will appear in these pages over the next few weeks. As written, the truth about private 5G for Industry 4.0 probably lies somewhere between the desperate excitement of MWC and the distracted indifference of Hannover Messe – and probably closer to the latter. But last impressions, too: in the end, the 5G Arena drew a crowd, and the stage content was informative and hopeful, and the ‘arena’ stands, mostly taken by new-wave vendors, were excitable, indeed.
(Six.) The other thing to note, of course, is that there are two – actually three, or ore – types of companies in this supplier yarn: smaller companies on the way up, spurred by every tech aspect of the Industry 4.0 narrative, including the plot twists around open cellular and private spectrum, and much bigger companies (and mega-corps) looking to either re-extend or reinvent themselves with digital revolution in the enterprise market, where 5G has a supporting role. Those looking for reinvention fall into two camps, arguably, according to their likely success.
The line from Hannover Messe – which is an important show, but just one show – says the likes of Microsoft and AWS, in particular, and possibly in that order, will re-extend themselves with Industry 4.0, and help to raise-up a bunch of smaller vendors in the process. And for the record, anyone that says industry does not care about 5G is wrong; just ask the smaller 5G vendors in the 5G Arena at Hannover Messe, which cannot believe their growth and prospects. Their strategies are right, and their luck is in, they reckon. First impressions count, but not always for very much.
As for the rest; the sense from Hannover Messe, at least, is that big industrialists like Siemens and Volkswagen, making various usage of the whole Industry 4.0 arsenal, will reinvent themselves, alongside the rest of the enterprise market, and that big legacy tech vendors… well, who on earth knows the answer to that? It could go any way.
