Quantum Industry Bird’s-Eye View From Mobile World Congress 2024

The view from within the industry is that quantum technologies are already making breakthroughs and will soon be ubiquitous. So it was sobering that when a moderator asked an audience at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024, taking place in Barcelona, Spain Feb. 26 – 29, who knew about quantum, only a handful of audience members raised their hands. 

Alex Challans, CEO of technology intelligence company Resonance, and Romi Sumaria, head of business development at Terra Quantum set out to change that during a panel discussion moderated by chief creator at Puzzle X Zina Jarrah Cinker.

Challans began the conversation by outlining what quantum can do for those new to it, introducing the three main quantum technologies. 

“The first, quantum computing, is a way of solving certain problems at a faster speed or solving things that we wouldn't be able to solve any other way,” he said.

“The second is quantum sensing, which is being able to sense things that we wouldn't be able to with traditional technology. And thirdly, around quantum communications and networking, which are particularly relevant to this conference.”

Quantum advantage is a phrase often bandied around in discussions surrounding quantum computing. Sumaria explained that it in essence encapsulates the idea that quantum technologies will outperform the technologies that already exist. 

“The goal of the industry is that at some point quantum technology will outperform and replace a lot of the classical technologies that we use,” he said.

“What's exciting today is, with certain quantum algorithms, we can already see quantum improving performance for businesses. We can predict more accurately, start simulating complex systems and carry out optimization.”

Terra Quantum is working on quantum use cases that aim to improve the accuracy of predictions. One example is supporting the transition to clean energies by predicting weather systems and how they might affect solar or wind generation in the energy balance more accurately. 

Drug and materials discovery using quantum computing to simulate models is another opportunity, as is optimizing logistics routing to save carbon dioxide emissions. Quantum is also important for cybersecurity.

“What does that mean? It's how we make our defenses stronger to defend against stealing our data. The last factor is securing the lines of communication, which is the end goal, so we can make sure that none of our data or private conversations are intercepted,” Sumaria concluded.