Author | Huang Yu
Edit | Liu Baodan
Seventeen years ago, Apple released the iPhone, bringing mobile phones into the smart age. At the time, Nokia executives were still making fun of the iPhone, believing it to be a toy for children to play with. Later, laggards like Nokia were eliminated by the times.
Nowadays, the wave of AI large models is coming, bringing new opportunities to redefine the way humans and computers interact. For major mobile phone manufacturers, this is another new starting line, which will definitely bring a new round of reshuffle to the mobile phone industry.
This time, no one dared to take it lightly. Since the second half of last year, the AI large model of the leading domestic mobile phone manufacturers no longer only exists in "ppt", but has begun to accelerate the landing, especially busy putting large models into the new system.
Following Huawei, Xiaomi, vivo, and OPPO, Honor will also officially release its self-developed operating system MagicOS 8.0 on January 10, 2024. The system will be equipped with a self-developed AI model with 7 billion parameters - "Magic Model" on the new Magic6 series. This is also Honor's first device-side platform-level AI model.
The mobile phone AI model is still in the stage of cultivating the user's mind, and in order to seize the opportunity, major mobile phone manufacturers are also eager to highlight their uniqueness.
After being snatched away by OPPO, which was one step earlier, the gimmick of "the first mobile phone with 7 billion parameters applied on the end of the deviceAI large model mobile phone", Honor emphasized that MagicOS 8.0 is equipped with the industry's first new paradigm of intent-based intelligent terminal interaction - Intent-based UI (IUI).
Zhao Ming, CEO of Honor, said that rewriting the underlying operating system is not what Honor is pursuing, but reconstructing the operating system with AI is.
The traditional human-computer interaction model is based on the logic of iOS, with the machine as the center for resource allocation and the interaction of human-computer interface and natural interface, which was established by Steve Jobs in 2007. In Zhao Ming's view, 17 years have passed, and no one has imagined the next generation of operating systems, and Honor hopes to give a different answer.
According to reports, IUI supports multi-modal interaction methods such as natural language, voice, pictures, gestures, and eye movements, which can intelligently identify user intentions, make rapid reasoning decisions, and actively provide personalized services to users.
To put it simply, compared with traditional human-computer interaction, IUI aims to lower the threshold for using the OS and improve the efficiency of interaction.
IUI benefits from the "new kernel" of MagicOS 8.0 - platform-level AI. Unlike application-level AI, platform-level AI can be used as a technology foundation to fully enable the operating system (OS).
The traditional OS kernel is mainly responsible for managing hardware resources, while the "new kernel" of platform-level AI is responsible for "managing" human-related factors, such as personal knowledge base, location and status, habits and portraits, etc., to help the OS identify user intentions and schedule system services.
Zhao Ming pointed out that enabling the operating system with AI and reconstructing the operating system with AI has always been Honor's ideal, strategy and goal. In 2022, Honor will launch platform-level AI in MagicOS 7.0, which is this direction and concept. By MagicOS 8.0, such a solution has been systematically implemented.
MagicOS 8.0 builds a large model ecosystem for device-cloud collaboration, with the device-side platform-level AI model as the central control, understanding user intentions, disassembling and orchestrating tasks, and connecting cloud-side large models to distribute, integrate, and schedule atomic services to complete the closed-loop of complex tasks.
In this ecosystem, the device-side AI model is self-developed by Honor, which filters out personal privacy through the device-side protection network and ensures that personal information is not on the cloud, protecting privacy and security. In the large model on the cloud side, Honor chose to cooperate with other companies, such as Baidu Wenxin large model.
It is understood that Honor has released the "100 Model Ecological Plan", which will provide an entrance for the 100 models, so that the cloud-side general model and the vertical domain model of various industries can be integrated into the magic OS through shelfization.
Compared with the self-developed large models on both sides of the cloud at the same time, Honor has obviously chosen a path with less investment.
Nowadays, there are two main paths for mobile phone manufacturers to deploy large models, one is to do lightweight and local deployment of mobile phone side large models, mainly Honor and Xiaomi, and the other is to adopt the architecture design of cloud collaboration, that is, to deploy tens of billions and hundreds of billions of large models in the cloud, and deploy billion-level large models on the mobile phone side, and launch large model matrices, such as Huawei and vivo.
AI large models have undoubtedly become the focus of the next competition of major mobile phone manufacturers.
Chen Haijin, an analyst at Debang Securities, said that the hardware represented by smart phones will not miss the dividends of the era of the AI wave, and hardware + AI is a revolutionary promotion of work and lifestyle, which is expected to give birth to a new "iPhone moment", and terminal hardware is expected to become an AI entrance.
Ivan Lam, a senior analyst at Counterpoint, told Wall Street that the application of AI models is a topic that must be taken seriously by mobile phone manufacturers.
Major mobile phone manufacturers also understand the importance of AI models to the future development of the mobile phone industry.
Zhao Ming pointed out that the capabilities of AI, especially platform-level AI, must be a very important point to differentiate products from competitors in the future. OPPO management said more bluntly that companies that do not deploy large-scale mobile phones this year will lose their competitiveness in the market.
Wang Peng, an associate researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, also told Wall Street that in the fierce competition in the smartphone market, mobile phone manufacturers can seek differentiated competition and open up new areas of innovation through self-developed AI models, so as to enhance their brand image and market competitiveness.
Therefore, in the context of the current hardware and software innovation of smart phones, the application of AI large models is an important trend in the innovation of major mobile phone brands in the future, and it is an inevitable strategy to continue to seek breakthroughs on the road of high-end.
Exploring the application of large AI models is destined to be a correct but difficult path.
First and foremost is the cost of training large models. Zhao Ming revealed that Honor's AI R&D expenses have accumulated to 10 billion in the past few years, and after entering the training of AI large models, the investment in computing resources has increased very much, and it may double every year, and the investment in AI will increase in the future.
At present, the exploration of AI large models by leading mobile phone manufacturers is still in its infancy, and the real use scenarios have not yet been clarified, and voice assistants are still the main landing method.
In any case, the AI model has pressed the accelerator button for a new round of elimination in the mobile phone industry.
Standing at an important turning point in the industry, all major mobile phone brands need to seize the important opportunity of AI large models, break through the bottleneck of software and hardware innovation of smart phones, create their own differentiated advantages, and achieve overtaking or consolidate their position in the industry.
In the era of AI, standing still will eventually be eliminated by the market, whether it is Honor or other mobile phone brands, they dare not take it lightly.
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