Visual China.
Text |Business Show, Author |Zheng Jiuyu, edYang Xiaoruo.On the first day of construction (February 18), the mobile phone circle continued to roll up the wave of AI, rolling in.
Manufacturers are almost all waving their flags and shouting "all in AI". For example, Meizu directly announced its decision to "All in AI", which will stop the development of new projects of traditional smartphones and fully invest in "tomorrow's devices" AI for new generations.
Liu Zuohu, chief product officer of OPPO, mentioned in the open letter that 2024 is the first year of AI mobile phones. In the next five years, the impact of AI on the mobile phone industry can be compared to the replacement of feature phones by smartphones in the past. From the perspective of the development stage of the industry, AI mobile phones will also become the third stage of the mobile phone industry after feature phones and smart phones.
He said that through AI, the experience of mobile phones can be redone to help users achieve better value. Obviously, this round of AI technology, supported by large models, is reshaping the future of the mobile phone industry.
In fact, the AI wave in the mobile phone industry began in the second half of 2023, when Chinese and foreign mobile phone manufacturers collectively "entered" the artificial intelligence (AI) battlefield in the field of mobile communications.
For example, many overseas brands such as Google and Samsung, as well as domestic mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo, all announced at that time to join the army of promoting the application of generative artificial intelligence (AIGC) in the field of smartphones.
Counterpoint Research, an international market research organization, predicts that 2024 will become the first year of global AI mobile phones. According to the agency, more than 500 million AIGC-enabled handsets are expected to be shipped by the end of 2027.
But for the mobile phone industry, is this wave of AI a disruptive innovation, or is it just a new gimmick? How much value can the so-called "AI be able to redo the experience of mobile phones" to help users realize? To what extent can it revolutionize the mobile phone industry? Will the AI model trigger another major reshuffle in the mobile phone industry?
Following the spelling of screens and photographs, mobile phone manufacturers began to roll up AI.
We know that in the past few years, the iterative upgrades of mobile phone products have often focused on hardware, such as new chips, high brush screens, images and fast charging, etc., "volume" to the end, these configurations have become the standard configuration of flagship machines.
However, in the case of slow iteration and upgrading of hardware technology, it is difficult for mobile phone manufacturers to win the favor of consumers through a little upgrade of hardware. After all, there is not much difference in experience between the mobile phones of a few years ago and the latest mobile phones.
According to Techlnsights, the global smartphone replacement cycle in 2023 has stretched to a record high of 51 months, and many users are still using models released four years ago.
When the "story" of the manufacturers cannot be told, the performance growth is also "weak". When hardware stacking cannot meet the needs of market growth, it is necessary to seek breakthroughs and innovations in software experience.
In 2023, the popularity of AI large models has made mobile phone manufacturers at home and abroad see the possibility of innovating in software experience.
On the one hand, the evolution of AI is expected to improve the experience of using smartphones at the software level, thereby driving more consumer demand. On the other hand, jumping out of the vicious circle of hardware "rolling" each other, seeking new competition points, and playing differentiation are also important bargaining chips to gain advantages in the new competition.
The concept of "AI + mobile phone" will become a strong consensus in the industry in 2024, and this year is also known as the "first year of AI mobile phones". Driven by this wave, no mobile phone company wants to miss the prosperity of this track.
On January 17, Samsung released a new generation of flagship smartphones Galaxy S24 series in California, and announced that it would cooperate with Google to embed the artificial intelligence large language model Gemini in the new machine.
According to the American "Wall Street**", with the blessing of AI, the Galaxy S24 phone can translate** and text messages in real time, improve the imperfect**, and trigger Google search by circleing ** and text on the phone.
As the world's second-largest smartphone manufacturer, Samsung's innovation marks the industry's large-scale adoption of AI technology, according to the report. Apple, Samsung's old rival, has yet to release specific plans for the iPhone in the field of AI. But at Apple's earnings conference** last November, CEO Tim Cook said Apple was working on AIGC.
On January 18, Huawei also officially announced HarmonyOS Next (HarmonyOS Next version), which has also become a complete HarmonyOS and will no longer be compatible with Android applications. Honor released Honor MagicOS 8The 0 system can realize AI-driven intent recognition human-computer interaction, so that AI can be better integrated into mobile phones and operating systems.
And when AI mobile phones form a trend in 2023, as early as October last year, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, etc. have already announced new systems one after another. For example, Xiaomi will connect the intelligent assistant Xiao Ai to the self-developed large model MILM, OPPO will create a new Xiaobu assistant based on its self-trained Andean large model, so that the "smart phone" will evolve to the "smart phone", vivo has also released a self-developed general large model matrix.
Although not all of these new systems are mobile phone systems, it seems that it has become a consensus to create a new system that is different from other manufacturers.
The industry believes that this is also the future need for the development of AI mobile phones.
Zhang Yi, CEO and chief analyst of iiMedia Consulting, said that China's smartphone market will reach a replacement peak every three to five years, the last replacement peak appeared in 2020, and 2024 will be the year of mobile phone replacement again, which coincides with the outbreak of AIGC. It is expected that AI mobile phones will usher in a large development space in 2024.
A number of industry insiders said that entering the first year of AI mobile phones, a new reshuffle in the mobile phone industry may come earlier.
A very important indicator is the decline in shipments. According to data released by IDC in January 2024, global smartphone shipments in 2023 will be 11700 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 32%, a 10-year low in shipments.
And the shipment volume of China's smartphone market in 2023 is about 27.1 billion units, down 50%, also the lowest in nearly 10 years.
The sluggish shipments of smartphones have also affected the entire consumer electronics industry chain. For example, Qualcomm, a smartphone chip company, has a revenue of 358 in fiscal year 2023$2 billion, down 19% year-on-year.
In the brand ranking, Apple's shipments surpassed Samsung and ranked first. However, under the influence of many factors such as lower than expected sales, Apple officials have also seen rare price cuts. Only half a month into the beginning of 2024, Apple announced a price cut on its official website in China, which also sparked heated discussions in the market.
In such a situation, enterprises in the smartphone industry chain need new stories and are looking forward to ushering in new performance growth.
Therefore, after the explosion of AI in 2023, the introduction of AI into mobile phones has become the object sought after by these companies.
These companies are "rolling" AI, how to "roll" specifically? The industry believes that the device-side large model based on the local mobile phone, in addition to being more private, if you want to provide a more personalized and intelligent experience, it is what we call the intelligence of active services. Another of its core advantages requires system-level operation authority to assist in the implementation, that is, to complete the mobile phone operation independently according to the needs.
Compared with non-local and non-system-level AI models, AI models developed based on mobile phone systems will have higher permissions, complete more operations on mobile phones, and obtain more local information. This is also something that cannot be accomplished by large cloud models such as ChatGPT and Wenxin Yiyan.
In addition, getting rid of the limitations of Android's underlying framework will help you create more innovative functions, avoid homogeneous competition, and enhance ecological integration capabilities, so that AI can connect multiple in-depth scenarios, which is also the only way to get rid of hardware limitations and win with software experience.
However, the concept of "the first year of mobile AI" is also causing some controversy. A number of industry insiders interviewed by the Global Times believe thatAI mobile phones are still in the start-up stage, the profit model is scarce, and domestic and foreign companies are still in the layout stage. The track is hot, but the development of the entire industry needs to be further clarified.
With the introduction of AI into mobile phones, this puts forward higher requirements for the hardware support capabilities of mobile phones, and it is inevitable for major manufacturers around the world to innovate and compete in hardware.
However, it should also be noted that for the smart phone industry, which has entered the stock market, technological innovation is the key to pulling it back to the recovery cycle. The industry is calling for new forces to break this deadlock, and AIGC will play that role in due course.
At the same time, the competition in technology iteration nodes will also be more intense, and it is easier to reshuffle rankings and overtake in corners, and the market pattern is moving towards the eve of great changes.
As Bill Gates said, "ChatGPT is as important as the invention of the internet and will change the world." ”
But when will the outbreak of this node be, it will take time to truly realize the implementation of the industry, and it also needs a prosperous application ecosystem to support it, so as to achieve experience subversion.
AI mobile phone for mobile phone manufacturers, is not only to create a differentiated competitive advantage of the new selling point, but also to highlight the high-end intelligent image of the mobile phone brand, this competition around AI and user experience, will also face many challenges such as technology, cost, market, innovation.
However, the prosperity of the first year of AI mobile phones is always worth looking forward to.
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