There are many manufacturers betting aggressively on AI mobile phones. Why is this one the top one?

This year’s Chinese mobile phone market is undergoing major changes.

The intersection of two major variables has begun to show its influence and make the market hot again:

First, Huawei has made a full comeback with unprecedented grandeur.

Secondly, AI has stirred up the situation and become a battleground for military strategists.

Under this fusion, the throne of the first quarter now belongs to it——

Glory.

AI has become a key growth engine for mobile phone manufacturers

Huawei’s comprehensive return adopts the most low-key posture and has gained the highest level of attention in history .

There was a heated discussion in the market that after Huawei’s return, “Honor will be the most affected.”

But as the latest data comes out, this is not the case.

The latest quarterly mobile phone tracking report released by IDC (International Data Corporation) shows that in the first quarter of this year, China’s overall smartphone shipments were approximately 69.26 million units. Specifically, in terms of manufacturers, Honor has a market share of 17.1%. Winning the first place "has become an important force in driving the market to continue to improve."

Wang Jiping, Vice President of IDC China, believes that this time Honor reaches the top, AI has become a key growth engine:

At the beginning of this year, Honor released the AI MagicOS 8.0, a capable full-scenario operating system, is blessed with a large magic model and uses platform-level AI as the core and base, bringing smart services that "the more you use it, the better it will be, and the more you use it, the better it will understand you". The first Magic6 series equipped with MagicOS 8.0 has been well received by the market.

According to Wang Jiping, thanks to the increase in AI functions and all-round upgrades such as images and screens, the shipment volume of the new flagship Magic6 series in the first quarter exceeded that of the previous generation in the first two quarters. Total shipment volume;

On the other hand, driven by the Honor Magic V2 equipped with platform-level AI and other folding screen family products, the share of Honor folding screen mobile phones has increased by as much as 675.4% year-on-year since last year.

Relying on the performance of Honor Magic6 series and folding screen family, in the first quarter of this year, Honor’s high-end market share above US$600 increased significantly, with shipments increasing by 123.3% year-on-year. The high-end market share was second only to Apple and Huawei.

手机AI≠AI手机

Then here comes the question——

AI mobile phone is a topic that every terminal manufacturer must cue after the big model application storm begins. In the first quarter, major domestic and foreign Android manufacturers that made aggressive bets launched their first products one after another.

Everyone is ambitious, and the bottom line is of course that we cannot lag behind in this competition.

Why is Glory the one that stands out?

Glory CEO Zhao Ming believes that the key is that "mobile phone AI is not equal to AI mobile phones":

In terms of the technical capabilities and experience of using AI on mobile phones, mobile phones provide platforms and algorithms.

But only when AI becomes the foundation and is ubiquitous on mobile phones can it be called an AI mobile phone.

Looking at the AI ​​mobile phones that appeared on the market in the first quarter, it is not difficult to see that although the promotional words are tightly bound to the "big model" and "AIGC", in the In terms of specific landing routes, there are actually differences in genres.

The route chosen by most manufacturers is to take the lead in focusing on applications. Based on AIGC technologies such as text generation and image generation that have been refined in the cloud, AIGC applications for device-side and device-cloud collaboration are launched on mobile phones. For example, more intelligent portrait cutout, translation, meeting summary, etc.

Manufacturers represented by Honor are doing the opposite.

Zhao Ming has publicly stated many times that mobile phone manufacturers should avoid falling into the trap of application explosion. In the field of AI, the core value that terminal manufacturers can bring to consumers lies at the operating system level.

Specifically, the latter route actually starts from first principles, considering that the core issues that consumers really care about are:

Whether the vigorous big model and AIGC can really Bring a better and more difficult-to-replace practical experience to terminal devices.

So, what is the experience that can be truly enhanced after large models enter the mobile phone?

The most intuitive thing is to move from "people looking for services" to "services looking for people".

At the level of technological exploration, Qualcomm has demonstrated the ability of intelligent assistants to proactively make decisions based on user habits: when planning a travel route, it will proactively ask if you want to buy a cup of coffee at a passing coffee shop.

On a practical level, you can take Honor as an example:

First of all, MagicOS 8.0, which uses platform-level AI as the new core, brings the industry's first Human-computer interaction based on intent recognition.

It can identify human-computer interaction intentions and is a system-level active service.

When traveling, when you arrive at the subway station, your mobile phone will automatically pop up the bus code; when you arrive at the airport, your boarding pass will automatically pop up; when you arrive at the cinema, your ticket collection code will pop up.

You can also notify the leader of a meeting in the group. Just take a screenshot and click "Create Schedule", and the system will be able to identify the time, location, and meeting topic, and create the corresponding schedule in the calendar.

One of the core functions, the "any door" based on multi-modal capabilities, can complete the "one-step direct" transfer between apps.

Similar to this, there are many more experiences brought by any door. To sum up, it is to simplify the traditional multi-step operation into a one-step operation, and achieve the goal in one step.

Behind the user experience, Honor also more clearly proposed the four-layer AI architecture theory of terminal devices:

The first layer is at the system level, using AI to enable cross-system and cross-device fusion. That is to say, different operating systems can be seamlessly connected through AI decision-making to realize data sharing between mobile phones, tablets, PCs and other devices.

The second layer is at the stand-alone level, using AI to reconstruct the operating system. Based on artificial intelligence technology, the terminal will understand you better the more you use it, and the more you use it, the better it will be.

The third layer is at the application level, that is, the application of AI on the terminal side.

The fourth layer is AI device-cloud collaboration. That is, on the premise of ensuring user privacy and security, network-side AI such as AIGC and cloud large models can be presented on mobile phones.

In fact, this four-layer architecture also outlines the current competitive situation in the AI ​​mobile phone market:

The third and fourth layers are easier to penetrate, Be the first to usher in the outbreak.

But the first and second layers are more critical to terminal manufacturers and are the core values ​​that differentiate terminal companies from Internet companies.

The next stage of mobile phones: intelligent agents

Using the currently hotly debated technical hot words to make a brief summary, these two different application routes can be divided into "tool schools" ” and “intelligent school”.

The so-called tool school pays more attention to the tooling of single-point AIGC technical capabilities, emphasizing the direct efficiency improvement brought by tool changes in specific task scenarios.

The "intelligent school" pays more attention to the in-depth integration of large models, AIGC capabilities and terminal operating systems, that is, it aims to give full play to the capabilities of large models in perception, memory, understanding, reasoning, and decision-making, and continuously learn from users Habits, understand user intentions, and schedule various capabilities of the terminal around user needs.

Compared with launching AIGC applications to solve certain types of problems, the layout of "Intelligent School" appears to be more long-term. The core is people-centered and meets consumers' essential needs for mobile phone intelligence:

On the one hand, simplify the human-computer interaction model so that terminals such as mobile phones can become more and more like human assistants, actively adapting and matching people's needs.

On the other hand, it can make full use of the large amount of user personalized data retained in the terminal, allowing the intelligent assistant to self-evolve and continue to grow according to user characteristics.

In fact, this is also the key to whether AI mobile phones can become the new form of mobile phones in the third stage just like smart phones replacing functional phones-

Through terminal devices such as mobile phones, can we really Can you find a "Jarvis" that can learn by itself and continuously adapt to user needs?

# However, it is worth noting that the route of advanced mobile phone intelligence, even in the current era of rapid progress in large-scale model technology, still faces technical challenges that cannot be underestimated.

The key difficulty is that the agent route involves using AI to reconstruct the operating system.

Zhao Ming also further explained this. Compared with applications, the construction of this core capability is more threshold:

Honor’s route is to first develop platform-level AI and AI mobile phones. Core capabilities are built. To a certain extent, we have slightly controlled and inhibited the development of mobile AI applications because we were worried that we would place too much emphasis on single-point applications and neglect the construction of core capabilities.

On this basis, at this node of 2024, we will work hard on AI end-side applications. There is no threshold in itself because it does not involve the reconstruction of the operating system.

This also explains why Honor took the lead in the competition of AI mobile phones in the first quarter.

First of all, it is deployed early, so it can take the lead when cutting-edge technology brings innovation opportunities.

On the first-generation Magic in 2016, Honor was the first to bring the function of automatically turning on the screen when looking at it, automatically pushing boarding passes at the airport, etc., allowing the phone to actively recognize the user's intention, and has since established the Honor IUI (Intent-Recognized Human-Computer Interaction) Evolutionary Direction.

In 2022, Honor began to establish platform-level AI capabilities on MagicOS 7.0, pushing a variety of card reminders in the three major scenarios of smart travel, smart life, and smart entertainment, including flight reminders, express delivery reminders, repayment reminders, etc. The prototype of IUI was gradually established.

With the migration of large model technology to the terminal side, this year, Honor not only released the 7 billion parameter "magic large model", but also comprehensively upgraded its platform-level AI capabilities based on the large model on the terminal side. MagicOS 8.0 once again revolutionizes human-computer interaction, realizing intent-recognized human-computer interaction, making it possible to personalize the operating system.

On the other hand, Honor platform-level AI allows the phone to pay more attention to the user's personal elements, such as location, status, personal habits, knowledge base and other human elements.

On the other hand, the support of the device-side large model (Honor’s self-developed 7 billion parameter magic large model) can further increase platform-level AI’s learning and understanding of human factors elements.

Secondly, it is a large investment.

As of now, Honor’s AI research and development expenses have accumulated to 10 billion, and the number of AI patents exceeds 2,100.

One More Thing

Coincidentally, Apple, which was revealed to be announcing a new layout of AI at this year’s WWDC, recently reported progress related to large models, which also revealed that the large models will be integrated with iOS. The "intelligent school" tendency of deeper integration.

In March, a new paper from Apple, "ReALM: Reference Resolution As Language Modeling," also revealed Apple's technological progress in improving the voice assistant's ability to understand and respond to commands.

To put it simply, it is to let the large model analyze what operations the user has done on the mobile phone screen, so as to learn the user's usage habits and understand the user's intention.

With the combination of multiple sources of information, Apple now has great momentum to put theoretical research into practice.

It seems that whether it is Huawei’s comprehensive return, Honor’s strong rise to the top, or Apple’s pursuit of new changes, the terminal situation in 2024 is destined to be more strongly intertwined with AI and large models. AI has become the new long-term focus of competition in the terminal market.

Everyone has Jarvis, which is indeed more and more worth looking forward to.

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