Author | Yun Peng
Edit | Desert Shadow
According to data released by IDC, an authoritative market research organization, China's smartphone market shipments increased by 6.5% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, following a slight recovery at the end of last year.
As the market recovered, the performance of the two Chinese brands was particularly eye-catching, with Honor taking the first place with a market share of 17.1% and Huawei rising 110% year-on-year, both tied for the first place. Honor and Huawei have become the "two heroes" of Chinese smartphones.
▲The market performance of the top five smartphone manufacturers in the first quarter of 2024, source: IDC
In fact, since Huawei's strong return in August last year, public opinion has generally discussed that Honor may be most affected, and now that the boots have landed, Glory has increased instead of falling, and even won the championship in one fell swoop, becoming the most eye-catching performance among Chinese smartphone brands.
It is worth mentioning that in the high-end market of more than 600 US dollars, Glory's shipments increased by 123.3% year-on-year, ranking among the top three high-end.
If the sales growth brought by Huawei's return is more due to its brand potential, then Honor's ascent to the top is entirely due to its own product strength and technological advantages.
So what makes Honor different? If you look closely, AI is undoubtedly the biggest gap.
From the release of MagicOS 8.0, the end-to-end landing of the magic model, the platform-level AI in-depth system, to the official debut of the human-computer interaction mode based on intent recognition, it has entered the life of every consumer. The intelligent interactive experience of mobile phones has ushered in a revolutionary "leap", which has also become a unique advantage of Honor mobile phone products.
Thanks to a series of major upgrades in AI and other aspects, the first quarter shipments of the Magic6 series exceeded the sum of the first two quarters of the previous generation, and the Honor Magic V2 equipped with platform-level AI and other folding screen family products have increased by up to 675.4% year-on-year since last year. It can be said that the surge in sales is the best test for the blockbuster upgrade of AI to be recognized by the market.
From the fourth quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year, the domestic smartphone industry has rapidly embraced AI large models, with various end-to-end large models landing and various AI applications springing up. So the question is: big mobile phone manufacturers are doing AI, why does Honor stand out?
The implementation of the AI model will inevitably become a key driving force for the long-term development of smartphones, which will have a subversive impact on the entire smartphone ecosystem and application scenarios.
Although the prospect of AI mobile phones is like this, at this stage, various manufacturers are basically in the exploration stage, and even more are doing "mobile AI" - integrating cloud-side large models on the device side to provide various AIGC applications and functions on mobile phones.
In contrast, Honor seems to have become a manufacturer that has taken a different path - focusing on the lower system layer rather than the more explicit application layer, and using AI to redo the mobile phone operating system and user experience.
In the face of the boom of AI large models, why did Honor not choose to rush to the top, but chose a path that is inaccessible and extremely challenging? What is the difference between Honor's practice of using AI to reconstruct the underlying operating system and the common practice of making mobile phone AI? How will the four-layer AI architecture proposed by Honor affect the development of itself and the entire industry on the road of "intelligence"?
In this article, Zhidong will dismantle the above questions one by one, and demonstrate why Honor's AI layout route, which looks a little "stupid", is more forward-looking, pioneering and leading, and where will this AI route take Honor, the consumer electronics industry, and even the whole world today.
1. AI reconstructs smart terminals, from mobile phone AI to AI mobile phones, and the operating system has become a key watershed
As for how to make AI mobile phones, everyone may be exploring, with different paths, but there is no disagreement on the understanding of the importance of AI large models.
The emergence of new AI technologies represented by large models will accelerate the "reconstruction" of intelligent terminals, which may not only affect the terminal industry, but also the service ecology that grows on top of the terminal industry.
AI is no longer simply recognizing text and voice, and finding answers in the database as before, but based on multimodal technology to understand all kinds of information in human society, which will undoubtedly make the entrance of users to contact services change dramatically, and the way of human-computer interaction will also be redefined: the application market is a thing of the past, mobile phones have begun to actively provide services, and the interaction has changed from one-way to two-way.
AI has made it a reality for mobile phones to truly understand us, and AI has begun to truly have "life" and become "active", which is why there is a common name for "agent" in the industry.
The experience innovation brought about by such a huge change will inevitably inject new vitality into the mobile phone industry and stimulate a new round of consumer demand upgrading.
But the ideal is very plump, the reality is very skinny, although it has been less than a year since the AI large model entered the mobile phone track, but the "watershed" has obviously arrived.
Whether to do AI on mobile phones or use AI to reconstruct mobile phones has become a "fork in the road" that mobile phone manufacturers have to face.
If the AI function is integrated on the mobile phone, is it an AI mobile phone? The answer, of course, is no.
If it is only used as a "computing platform" to provide computing power support for various third-party AI functions and applications, and provide an interface that can display images and interact, this is far from incremental value for mobile phone manufacturers.
In Zhao Ming's view, AI mobile phones mean using AI to reconstruct and enable mobile phone applications and operating systems, as well as all aspects of consumer experience and business logic.
Standing today, Honor has proved the importance and correctness of choosing to use AI to reconstruct mobile phones with practical actions. But the reality is that not every manufacturer has the ability and courage to redo the mobile phone operating system with AI. Naturally, the technical difficulty behind this is not at the same level.
Second, the tool school VS the intelligent body school, Honor went three years ahead of schedule in the direction that Apple was aiming at
The different choices made by different players have led to the development of two different "schools" in the current industry: the "intelligent body school" represented by Honor and Apple, and the "tool school" represented by Samsung and other domestic smartphone brands.
Toolkit manufacturers often put the capabilities of AI large models into mobile phones as a "capability package", which includes various single-point AI capabilities, such as summarizing the main points of the article, drawing according to the description, doing pictures to eliminate cutouts, or generating cool copywriting content, so as to improve the efficiency of mobile phones to solve a certain type of problem.
However, the problems of this method are equally obvious: the scenarios are limited, only one type of problem can be solved alone, the user learning cost is high, and the logic is still that "people understand the device they use", and the user experience is only "AI application on the mobile phone".
Of course, this has the advantage of being "fast", which can bring consumers a fresh experience in a short period of time, and then win market attention.
But when we calm down, we will find that these experiences seem to be available by "downloading an app", and they are also "0 barriers" compared to other brands.
In the eyes of industry insiders, what can be solved by the next AI App is not a real AI mobile phone.
In contrast, Honor's platform-level AI is actually an intelligent body equipped in the capillaries of mobile phone software and hardware, it is not a large model, nor an operating system, but an operating system reconstructed with AI.
This "agent" can be like an assistant, according to our needs to disassemble the task, and then complete it step by step, in the process it may call various applications in the mobile phone, various large model capabilities, it can even help us plan trips, organize parties.
It can also understand our intentions, identify our usage scenarios, and intelligently and proactively provide us with various convenient services.
Do you notice that there is anything different? The service is starting to find people, and the reason why it is called an agent is because it has become "alive", and it has subjective initiative in the true sense.
Moreover, this experience cannot be achieved by "downloading an AI app", because this is the underlying layer of the system, and AI needs to be directly built into the system layer to schedule various capabilities and complete tasks.
With the help of any door in MagicOS 8.0, I only need "one step" - easy drag, I can complete taxi, navigation, proper noun search, commodity price comparison, search and watch dramas and other things that used to require N more complex operations to complete, as soon as I raise my hand, the AI knows what I want to do, and takes the initiative to help me complete a series of complex actions.
These experiences are currently glorious "no one else has me".
With the continuous development of AI multimodal technology in the future, the dimension of this "agent" perception will also continue to increase.
It is not difficult for us to see that the effect of using AI to reconstruct the mobile phone operating system is immediate, but as mentioned above, not every manufacturer has the ability to do this, and it can even be said that there are many technical barriers to this matter for most manufacturers. The reason why glory can be achieved is inseparable from the correct foresight and firm long-term deep cultivation earlier than others.
In fact, it takes a huge amount of money to rewrite the original software system and operating system with AI, and the changes touch the architecture layer, which poses a great challenge to the existing R&D system of manufacturers, and even the existing consumer experience may be affected.
Zhao Ming once mentioned that at the beginning of independence, Honor mobile phones needed to shift from HarmonyOS to Android-based, so Honor was reconstructing its own software capabilities at that time, adjusting the organizational structure and system, and determining the overall architecture of redoing the new software system with AI capabilities.
At the beginning of 2022, Magic UI 6.0's Magic Live intelligence engine is using AI to enable the operating system, and Honor has put forward the concept of making mobile phones "easier to use and better to use, and the more you use them, the more they understand you".
In fact, the starting point of Honor's AI phone timeline was even earlier in 2016.
For other manufacturers, the changes brought by the large model may be the difference from 0 to 1, and for Honor, the large model is from 1 to 100, because Honor has already laid the foundation of 1, and Honor's system has long been an "AI Ready" version, so the large model has brought far more to Honor than to other manufacturers.
In fact, what Honor has been doing is using AI to enable the operating system, and the large model is just a catalyst that can accelerate this process, making many things that previously required extremely high workload with traditional algorithms more feasible, and allowing more intelligent functions to be accelerated.
Eight years ago, when Honor's original Magic was released in 2016, Honor wanted to reimagine services and consumer experience with AI, and based on the technology at the time, they launched low-power geofencing, which has become one of the underlying core technologies of today's AI applications.
Speaking of which, we have to mention that Honor has been benchmarking Apple, although Apple is indeed slow in the progress of AI landing, but we have reason to believe that Apple must be "holding back its big move".
According to the current industry information, Apple's AI is more like a "platform-level AI", similar to Honor, using AI to reconstruct mobile phone applications and even operating systems, rather than simply "take it and use it".
It can be said that Honor has been leading for nearly three years in the direction identified by Apple.
3. To be a mobile phone OS for thousands of people and thousands of faces, the intention is to identify the huge space for human-computer interaction
Using AI to reconstruct the operating system has allowed Honor to go in the right direction in the first wave of the AI mobile phone revolution and establish its own core technical barriers. However, this is not all, in Honor's view, this is the basic layer of their four-layer AI architecture, after laying the foundation of AI, human-computer interaction based on intent recognition and platform-level AI will undoubtedly bring a broader imagination.
At the press conference on March 18, Zhao Ming announced for the first time the all-scenario strategy of Honor's AI enablement and proposed a four-layer AI architecture, AI reconstructs the operating system, which belongs to the second layer of the overall architecture and is also the basic layer.
In the first layer, Honor will use AI to break down the barriers between different devices and different operating systems, and realize the seamless and free flow of services between different terminal devices, which lays the foundation for AI to flexibly call the capabilities of each device. The third layer is the application layer, which includes common AI cutouts and translations, which are also the dimensions that all other smartphone manufacturers are currently focusing on.
The fourth layer is the device-cloud collaboration of AI, that is, the large model layer, which presents the cloud large model application on the mobile phone, and Honor's "100 Models Ecological Plan" focuses on this layer.
For example, Honor cooperates with Baidu Intelligent Cloud to provide services through device-cloud collaboration, in this process, Honor's platform-level AI will use the device-side magic model to understand user intentions, filter out sensitive information to protect privacy, and at the same time call Baidu's Wenxin model to provide users with professional services such as knowledge questions and answers, life suggestions, etc.
On the whole, Honor's AI strategy is a whole, applying AI technology to all aspects of the system, so as to achieve platform-level AI, and then make AI capabilities across devices and operating systems. Platform-level AI is the foundation of application-level AI, and without the support of platform-level AI capabilities, application-level AI will lose room to display its capabilities.
The core AI capabilities provided by mobile phone manufacturers must be at the operating system level.
In Zhao Ming's view, the future smartphone operating system may no longer be the difference between Android, iOS, and Hongmeng, and everyone's operating system may be different in the future.
Zhao Ming once gave a very vivid example: when each of us was born, it was basically the same factory setting, and the family environment and parents accompanied you in the process of growing up are to input different training data to form your memory and your personal unique things.
The operating system of the future, injecting everyone's data, has different personalities and performances, which is the core logic and idea of the Honor AI mobile phone.
On a more macro level, when we look back at the development of human-computer interaction, we will find that when the graphical user interface was first born in 1983, no one would have imagined that the future of macOS and Windows would play such an irreplaceable and important role in thousands of industries.
In 2007, the first generation of the iPhone was released, and the natural user interface with touch at the core was born, but no one expected that smartphones would have the prosperity they have today.
Today, the AI interaction system based on intent recognition makes it possible for "devices to understand people", our needs can be met directly, and services no longer need to be cumbersome interactive operations, but can be reached in just one step.
In the future, the flower of Honor's AI application will grow on the soil of "human-computer interaction system based on intent recognition", and compared with the AI application on other brands of mobile phones in the industry, its actual experience will undoubtedly widen the gap.
What kind of intelligent experience will be brought by the integration of various AI applications and become part of the capabilities of the AI system?
Conclusion: Tens of billions of R&D investment aims at the future of AI, and Honor's hard-core technology innovation continues to lead the industry
Looking at Honor's complete set of actions in the field of AI mobile phones, we can see that Honor has chosen a difficult but correct path. Whether it is the end-to-end implementation of large models, the reconstruction of the underlying operating system by AI, or the research and development of related technologies for intent recognition interaction, each of them is extremely difficult.
Perhaps, as Zhao Ming said, AI is a very forward-looking technology, and it is difficult to measure it with an input-output ratio at this stage, and Honor obviously attaches more importance to the AI market in the future.
It is understood that in 2023, Honor's overall R&D investment will account for 11.5% of its total revenue, AI R&D expenses have reached 10 billion, and AI patent achievements have reached 2,100, of which there are 600 categories related to AI intent recognition.
In fact, not only AI, but also Honor's firm investment in technology research and development has also enabled it to achieve leading advantages in many fields, becoming the source of Honor's smartphone product strength.
From Hongyan Communication, Qinghai Lake Battery, Oasis Eye Protection Screen, Giant Rhino Glass, Eagle Eye Camera to Luban Titanium Hinge, from Communication, Battery Life, Screen, Glass, Image to Folding Screen, Honor has brought a lot of new shining points to the smartphone market, which has now entered the stage of "micro innovation", and has also provided many valuable solutions to the industry.
Obviously, Honor has chosen to lead innovation rather than monetization. The consumer electronics terminal industry has a complex industrial system, which requires the industrial chain to work together, and Honor has driven China's mobile phone industry chain to high-end upgrading through the technical empowerment of the industrial chain, and at the same time, it has also formed a new global competitive advantage for the domestic mobile phone industry chain.
We have reason to believe that in this wave of AI mobile phones, Honor is by no means a "momentary brave", and Honor is unswervingly using AI to enable the entire business strategy, which will undoubtedly inject new vitality into the development of AI mobile phones and lead a new round of terminal innovation cycle.