Ding Science and Technology Network ObservationOn the first day after the Spring Festival holiday in 2024, Meizu said it would be "all in AI". For Meizu, this may be the beginning of a new "small but beautiful" stage.
After all, the slogan of "All in AI" has long been put forward by many companies: a few years ago, "All in AI" was Lenovo's declaration of business reform; As for Meizu's peers, those mobile phone brands, especially the head brands, have landed "AI mobile phones" last year, and the story of "end-side large models" has been preached to the public again and again; Meizu's upstream companies, such as Qualcomm, are committed to promoting chips that are "injected with the AI force" to more customers or partners.
However, Meizu also looks "different", and may be able to hedge against the "sluggishness" of action.
*From Meizu Technology Weibo).
There are "differences", at least, in terms of conceptual description, Meizu expresses this to the outside world. The difference between Meizu and Lenovo and its peers in the mobile phone industry is that it tries to open up a "new category" and change the track, rather than injecting AI capabilities into existing businesses, such as making AI PCs or AI mobile phones. In Meizu's parlance, it will stop new projects of traditional smartphones and go all out to "tomorrow's devices". "Tomorrow's device" should be what Meizu calls an "AI native design" terminal.
Compared with AI mobile phones, from the market level, "AI native" terminals are indeed close to a "no man's land" at present. This may be the effect that Meizu wants to gain in the spread of the concept.
According to Ding Technology Network, there are two main "AI native terminals" that are currently being discussed a lot:
One is the AI PIN released by the startup Humane at the end of last year, which is a wearable device that focuses on voice interaction and visual sensing, and the interactive interface can be projected into the palm of the hand. Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which launched the chatbot app ChatGPT, is the majority shareholder of the company.
The other is the handheld called Rabbit R1, which was unveiled by a startup called Rabbit (formerly known as Cyber Manufacture) during CES 2024, and voice interaction is also the main interaction method of this device. The founder is a serial entrepreneur in the field of AI, and investors include OpenAI's first venture capitalist.
Judging from the operating mechanism of the above-mentioned "AI native terminals", they are committed to allowing users to directly link to various services themselves by simply saying what they want, without the need for multiple touches, typing, searching, consulting, filtering, etc., so they are considered to be a possible replacement for "traditional" smartphones, and at the same time will "kill the app".
Ding Technology Network noticed that in addition to AI PIN and Rabbit R1, more "AI native terminals" are also emerging. As a "native species", in addition to their difference in form from previous devices, the main thing is actually the aforementioned that through the help of large model capabilities, the device no longer depends on the traditional physical interface control, such as screen touch, keyboard input, icon clicking, window operation, etc., so as to "go to the application" and directly connect to the service.
After all, the consumer market expects products with new forms and new experiences to provide new experiences, and at the same time, the iteration of AI technology has also been quite rapid in recent years.
However, the challenges are no small one.
On the one hand, the research and development of hardware, especially the research and development of new forms of hardware, will have a long cycle, and the speed of terminal iteration is far less than that of AI technology itself, which may bring about the dislocation of the terminal experience and the AI technology experience itself.
On the other hand, the experience of replacing the original mobile phone or PC depends on the opening of the interface, which faces more data security and privacy challenges, which depends on whether consumers are willing to accept it.
Against this backdrop, more mature mobile phones and PCs that continue to access new AI capabilities will continue to dominate the market. In the view of Ding Science and Technology, this situation will continue at least until the "AI native terminal" finds its own advantageous application scenarios. Before that, the "AI native terminal" may also become a "small and beautiful" group like the previous Meizu mobile phones.
From this point of view, Meizu, which is ready to put down the "traditional smartphone" at some point in the future and fall in love with the "AI native terminal", may have no choice. Because, if it can be at the head of the mobile phone market and reap the dividends brought by AI to smartphones faster, Meizu may not be able to show a similar "all-or-nothing" plot to the "AI native terminal" at this stage. After all, the experience of mobile phones is ready-made, and the dividends of AI large models will obviously take the lead in benefiting the so-called "traditional smartphones" that are still huge, and "AI native terminals" not only need a process for development, but the fierce competition may not be weaker than the early brand war of smartphones. (Ding Science and Technology Network original, **Be sure to indicate "**Ding Science and Technology Network").