During the CCTV Spring Festival Gala rehearsal this year, several hosts used their mobile phone's AI assistant backstage to send New Year greetings to audiences across the country, making many people aware of "AI mobile phones" for the first time.
AI mobile phones do not need to rely on third-party apps. Instead, they use the phone's own computing power to directly become the user's personal secretary.
Some institutions predict that the shipments of new generation AI mobile phones in the Chinese market will reach 37 million units in 2024 and 150 million units in 2027, with the new generation AI mobile phones accounting for more than 50% of the market share.
From feature phones to smartphones to the latest AI phones, what new, more intelligent and personalized user experiences can it bring to people?
It has become a trend for smartphones to turn to AI phones
In 2023, generative AI will continue to emerge, greatly improving people's work efficiency and even having an important impact on some industry changes.
Technology giants at home and abroad are developing and building their own large models.
In January this year, Samsung’s first AI phone launched attracted attention.
There is also news from Apple that the next generation iPhone will be equipped with generative AI.
Nowadays, it has become a trend for smartphones to turn to AI phones.
Domestic mobile phone manufacturers have tested the waters one after another, including Huawei, Honor, Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo, which have successfully deployed large models on mobile phones.
Recently, Meizu suddenly announced a strategic adjustment - to move All in AI, stop traditional "smartphone" new projects, and transform into the field of AI.
OPPO founder Chen Mingyong also issued an internal letter stating that 2024 is the first year of AI mobile phones.
In the next five years, the impact of AI on the mobile phone industry will be comparable to that of when smartphones replaced feature phones.
From the perspective of industry development stage, AI mobile phones will also become the third stage of the mobile phone industry after feature phones and smartphones.
"Device-cloud collaboration" AI mobile phone becomes personal secretary
What exactly can an AI phone do?
From the evaluation of AI mobile phones currently on sale, we can see that in addition to the common document organization capabilities of generative AI, AI mobile phones can also perform convenient image processing, such as removing passers-by, cluttered backgrounds, and mirror reflections in photos in addition to the main characters. Wait for "one-click clearing", and the effect calculated by AI may be more natural than the effect that people spend more effort to process with professional image processing software.
How is this different from image and text processing through third-party software?
In fact, the biggest change of AI mobile phones is processing through the mobile phone’s own computing power.
In the past, if you wanted to implement these functions, you needed to transfer them to the cloud through a third-party app, which affected the processing speed and instant response speed to a certain extent.
However, AI mobile phones have achieved "device-cloud collaboration", which means that some complex tasks that require a lot of calculations are transferred to the cloud, and some simple daily tasks are directly processed using large models on the mobile phone, which greatly improves work efficiency.
For another example, existing AI mobile phones can realize real-time translation and call summary functions, and have more practical usage scenarios.
For example, when making voice calls with people who speak different languages, the mobile phone can convert voice and text in real time, allowing both parties to communicate smoothly; and when the user receives an important call but is inconvenient to record it, the entire process can be recorded and summarized. Just like a real secretary.
The share of AI mobile phones will grow rapidly in 2024
Industry insiders believe that overall, AI mobile phones are actually in the early stages of commercialization.
At present, the related applications of AI large models start with information retrieval, text processing, image processing and other functions. In the future, mobile phone manufacturers will also combine AI large models with current voice assistants more, while balancing the use of device-side AI and cloud AI. relationships, and further attempts to combine large AI models with new fields and functions.
But this process still takes time.
The "2024 AI Mobile Phone White Paper" predicts that global shipments of new-generation AI mobile phones will reach 170 million units in 2024, accounting for about 15% of overall smartphone shipments.
In the Chinese market, the share of the new generation of AI mobile phones is showing a rapid growth trend. In 2024, the shipment volume of the new generation of AI mobile phones in the Chinese market will be 37 million units, and it is expected to reach 150 million units by 2027, and the market share It is expected to exceed 50%.
The report believes that the user value of AI mobile phones is mainly reflected in the provision of personalized assistant services with free interaction, intelligence, exclusive companionship, safety and trustworthiness.
This means that AI mobile phones will not only bring about hardware upgrades and cost increases, but also bring users a more intelligent and personalized experience.
Text/reporter Chen Si