In 2024, the smartphone industry ushered in the era of "the first year of mobile AI", and major mobile phone manufacturers have made AI technology the focus of their new products. At the Mobile World Congress (MWC), many domestic and foreign brands, from Honor and Xiaomi to OPPO and Samsung, showcased their AI technology breakthroughs. These technologies are not only impressive, but also show how AI can become a new engine for smartphone development.
For example, Honor's Magic6 series introduces a self-developed "magic model", while Xiaomi's Xiaomi 14 Ultra is equipped with what it calls the "first AI model computational photography platform" Xiaomi AISP. OPPO's Find X7 series is equipped with a self-developed "Andean model", and Samsung's Galaxy S24 series also emphasizes its AI function, showing the wide application and impact of AI technology in the field of smartphones.
The addition of these AI technologies is not only to improve the performance of mobile phones or add new features, but also to change the way users interact with their smartphones, bringing users an unprecedented experience. For example, the AI features of the Samsung Galaxy S24 series include two-way real-time translation during calls and creative image editing, which greatly improves the user experience.
The market response is also a testament to the attractiveness of AI phones. According to IDC, although global smartphone shipments hit a 10-year low in 2023, the mobile phone market is expected to show a recovery upward trend in 2024, driven by AI technology. Shipments of AI phones are expected to reach 1700 million units, accounting for 15% of the entire smartphone market. It is estimated that by 2026, nearly 50% of terminal equipment processors in the Chinese market will introduce AI technology.
In particular, the Samsung Galaxy S24 series sold more than 1 million units in South Korea within 28 days of its launch, setting a new record for the S series, an achievement that is largely due to its powerful AI features and users' desire for new AI experiences.
The rapid development and widespread application of AI technology has not only brought new vitality to the smartphone market, but also indicates that we are entering a new era of smartphones, an era that is more intelligent, more personalized and interactive. As AI technology continues to advance and improve, future smartphones will be able to offer more surprising features and experiences.
Mobile phones have become a gadget that we use every day, and because it is so easy to use, it has become the most direct way for us to contact artificial intelligence (AI) when we hold it in our hands frequently. Now, everyone is interested in fresh technology, which gives mobile phone companies the opportunity to use AI as a novel selling point. However, to be honest, the mobile phones on the market that advertise AI are actually just beginning to explore, and the future is full of possibilities, but in fact, it is still a little far from the kind of high-tech we imagined.
Starting from the second half of 2023, AI has become a hot topic of discussion in the mobile phone industry.
For example, OPPO and Vivo, both of which have announced that they have achieved some "firsts" in terms of AI large models. vivo launched its self-developed blue heart model in November 2023, and then vivo X100 series and iQOO 12 series mobile phones began to use this technology, and vivo also claimed that this is the first batch of mobile phones in China to use a large model.
By February 2024, vivo said that they already have 25 mobile phones with the Blue Heart model, including various vivo and iQOO brand phones. The AI functions of these mobile phones cover semantic search, Q&A, writing, image creation, and intelligent interaction.
OPPO is not far behind, and released its self-developed Andean model in November 2023, emphasizing dialogue enhancement, personalized services, and device-cloud cooperation. Although OPPO combined the phone with the large model is a little late, and will not release the Find X7 series until January 2024. OPPO said that the Find X7 is the world's first AI phone with a large model with 7 billion parameters.
Before the Spring Festival in 2024, OPPO also hyped its AI mobile phone in CCTV's Spring Festival Gala advertisement, saying that there are hundreds of AI functions waiting for users to explore. Some of OPPO's mobile phone series have begun to be labeled as "AI mobile phones", and some stores have begun to promote the "AI Early Childhood Program for Ten Million Users", and the slogan "OPPO AI mobile phones, feel free at every moment" are also pasted on the trial machines.
One of the big selling points of the Find X7 series phones is the **elimination function, which is to use AI technology to remove the unwanted things in **, and then complete the picture to look like new. A photographer Xiaomo said that he has tried many similar functions of software and mobile phones, and usually uses Photoshop's "content recognition filling" to deal with small problems, but the complex ones still have to be done manually. He thinks that the elimination effect of OPPO is quite natural, but sometimes the processing of details is still not precise enough, such as wanting to remove characters and reflections at once, and often need to try several times.
Xiaomi has also put a lot of effort into processing, which is a bit similar to OPPO.
In the spring of 2024, Xiaomi will unveil its new baby - Xiaomi 14 Ultra, which is not only a mobile phone, but also a display window for Xiaomi's new generation of large-scale computational photography technology - Xiaomi AISP. Imagine a small mobile phone inside, but the fusion of supercomputer-like power: CPU, GPU, NPU and ISP, the four major processors come together to deduce an amazing computing power of 60TOPS. For friends who are not familiar with this concept, 60tops means that this small device can complete up to a trillion operations per second, isn't it shocking?
The Xiaomi AISP brings not only a digital shock, but also a revolution at the practical application level. For example, the "super negative" function, which can provide high-precision negatives for photography enthusiasts, and directly connect with professional processing software such as Photoshop and Lightroom; There's also the "Super Capture" feature, which lets you shoot up to 150 high-quality shots in just a few seconds, capturing every unmissable moment. Xiaomi has really taken the potential of AI technology to the extreme this time, but they are emphasizing the practicality of this technology more than simply flaunting how "AI" their phones are.
At the same time, Huawei is not far behind, announcing in August last year that its HarmonyOS 4 operating system will integrate the Pangu model, and its hard power is undoubted. However, Huawei seems to be more focused on improving the quality of mobile photography through AI technology. In October last year, Huawei launched the "AI Cloud Augmentation Technology", which makes every detail of the mobile phone clearer through AI refined processing. And Huawei's executives showed their confidence in the technology by promoting the technology and its mobile phones through social media on the eve of the Chinese New Year this year.
Not to be outdone at the beginning of 2024, Honor launched its own "magic model", which was quickly applied to the Honor Magic 6 series of mobile phones. This technology gives the mobile phone unique functions such as "one word to check the picture" and "smart film", allowing users to quickly produce creative short films with just a simple conversation, and even intelligently identify important scenes and anniversaries in **, creating more surprises for users.
Define the AI form
In the field of AI mobile phones, the strategies and attitudes of major brands are different, showing a colorful and complex technology competition scenario.
Some brands are still in the initial stages of exploration, and they have already started to test the application of large model technology on mobile phones, but they have not made AI functions a major selling point. Others have taken a more high-profile stance, promoting their AI technologies and features. Among them, Meizu is undoubtedly one of the most adventurous. On the first day of the 2024 Spring Festival holiday, Meizu's CEO Shen Ziyu announced a bold decision: to fully invest in AI and stop developing new projects for traditional smartphones. Meizu's announcement is not only a major adjustment to its own development direction, but also a challenge to the entire industry.
Meizu intends to reinvent its FlyMe operating system and build an AI ecosystem, positioning its new product 21 Pro as an "open AI terminal" that opens up all large model platforms to developers around the world, a subversion of the traditional smartphone development model. Meizu's strategy seems to tell the world that they will not be limited to the narrow path of self-developed large models, but have chosen a more open and cooperative path.
Other manufacturers, such as Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, pointed out at MWC 2024 that many people have misconceptions about AI mobile phones, and real AI mobile phones should be able to evolve and evolve and provide users with a personalized experience. Liu Zuohu, the founder of OnePlus, proposed more specifically that the future of AI mobile phones should first realize the "super assistant" function, which becomes more intelligent by connecting various applications and self-learning in the mobile phone, so as to provide one-stop services.
Xiaomi's president, Lu Weibing, made a striking comment at MWC 2024, arguing that AI phones are more of a marketing gimmick than a real future direction. His remarks sparked widespread discussion and reflected deep divisions in the industry over the concept of AI phones.
In this discussion about AI phones, we also saw Apple's actions. While Apple has kept its technology development plans secret, there are already signs that Apple is integrating large model technology into Siri, which indicates that the future of iOS systems may be deeply integrated with generative AI technology.
The disruption is far from coming
In fact, we're still a long way from having a true AI phone — the kind of device that can run complex AI models locally, deliver deep personalization, and learn and evolve autonomously. According to Gartner's analysis, a true AI phone requires not only specific hardware and software configurations, but also seamless integration and efficient execution of AI functions and applications, including running foundational or fine-tuned AI models locally on the device to generate new content, strategies, designs, and methodologies.
The current challenges are mainly focused on hardware constraints and AI model deployment. Guohai**'s research report pointed out that although the application potential of large model technology is huge, its device-side deployment on mobile phones is subject to obvious hardware constraints. This includes not only the need for powerful computing power, but also the need for sufficient memory space to deploy these models. Although the current end-to-end landing model is mainly based on billions of parameters, in order to achieve model deployment of larger parameter levels, the demand for memory will increase significantly, which is difficult to achieve through productization in the short term. In addition, in order to achieve higher intelligent performance, large models need to reach a certain level of parameters, which is still a challenge for the performance of current mobile phones.
Chipmakers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek have taken some significant steps in finding solutions. For example, Qualcomm released the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip design specifically with AIGC in mind, enabling the phone to run a large model with 10 billion parameters. The Dimensity 9300 chip released by MediaTek claims to support large language models with up to 33 billion parameters and is optimized for Google's Gemini model. These advances undoubtedly provide some technical foundation for the development of AI mobile phones, but to achieve true end-to-end AI functions, innovation and optimization at multiple levels such as hardware, software, and algorithms are needed.
At present, many vendors still emphasize the combination of devices and clouds, that is, the realization of AI functions depends to a large extent on the computing and data processing capabilities of the cloud. For AI phones to truly reduce their dependence on the network and achieve more local computing and intelligent processing, so as to provide a more personalized and adaptive user experience, players in the industry need to overcome many difficulties and explore more innovative solutions. In this process, it is not only about the technical challenges, but also about how to define the role and functions of the smartphone of the future**. A real AI phone should not only be a smart device equipped with AI functions, but also a smart companion that can continuously learn and evolve, truly understand and adapt to user needs.
Regardless of the limitations of hardware, the exploration of the AI software ecosystem seems to be in its infancy, full of infinite possibilities and challenges. Although the practice of voice assistant and app collaboration between brands shows the potential of AI technology to simplify operations and enhance user experience, it also reveals the fragmentation and interoperability problems existing in the current ecosystem. The examples of Huawei Xiaoyi and OPPO's voice assistants are just the tip of the iceberg, showing how AI can interact with specific apps by understanding user instructions, but such interaction capabilities are still very limited in the widely used apps today. Integrating and optimizing this synergy to leverage the entire ecosystem is a daunting task for any player.
In the discussion of the future development of AI mobile phones, not only the progress of technology and ecology is crucial, but also the innovation of business models cannot be ignored. AI technology has the potential to revolutionize the business model of the mobile phone industry and even reshape the industry landscape. However, at present, many manufacturers are building market momentum around the concept of AI, in order to increase sales in the short term, and in the long run, real technological breakthroughs and ecological construction are the key.
With the development of AI technology, users are increasingly concerned about data security and personal privacy. Although the personalization service of AI mobile phones improves the user experience, the basis of this personalization is the extensive collection and analysis of user data. In the current environment, users can also protect their privacy to a certain extent by managing app permissions, but if AI technology can connect all apps, the boundaries of this privacy protection will become blurred. This is not only a technical challenge, but also a matter of user trust and legal ethics.
Globally, the development of large-scale model technology is gaining momentum, and innovative products such as OpenAI's SORA and Anthropic's Claude 3 series continue to be launched, which not only show the progress of technology, but also lead the public's imagination of the future of AI. These developments continue to push mobile phone manufacturers to find new ways to integrate AI technology into mobile phones, in order to meet the expectations of the public in a futuristic sense. Although the current AI phone is far from the ideal state in the hearts of many, just like the major technological breakthrough in history, the "iPhone moment" of AI mobile phone is not yet here, but it seems to be only a matter of time. For this, both industry players and ordinary consumers have reason to be expectant and patient.
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