AI mobile phone "ice and fire": manufacturers are betting with all their might, and consumers feel "unusable"

Recently, major mobile phone manufacturers have announced that they are betting on AI (artificial intelligence) mobile phone business.

On the evening of February 22, Xiaomi Group (01810. At the Xiaomi 14 Ultra launch event, Xiaomi announced the "Xiaomi AISP", which has been upgraded from the "Xiaomi Image Brain", and positioned it as "the first AI large-scale model computational photography platform".

According to the materials sent to reporters by the relevant person in charge of Xiaomi, Xiaomi's AISP platform fully integrates CPU (central processing unit), GPU (graphics processing unit), NPU (embedded neural network processor) and ISP computing power, which can achieve 60TOPS (trillion times per second, unit of processor computing power) computing power, and provides "super capture" and "super negative" functions.

This is also Xiaomi's first AI achievement to be released in 2024. At the mobilization meeting held in February 2024, Lei Jun, founder and chairman of Xiaomi, set the company's operating strategy for this year as "steady and enterprising", and reaffirmed the six sub-strategies, including the AI strategy.

Compared with the "steady and enterprising" Xiaomi, another mobile phone manufacturer, Meizu, is much more aggressive.

At the beginning of the new year, Meizu announced that it would stop the new project of traditional "smartphones" and fully invest in AI technology, "All in AI". In addition to building AI systems and AI ecosystems, Meizu specifically mentioned that it will reconstruct the hardware form and create "AI Device products".

In addition, Huawei also released the first-of-its-kind "AI cloud augmentation technology" at the Pocket 2 launch event on February 22, and OPPO announced the establishment of an AI center...... All signs seem to indicate that AI is becoming a key force for change in the mobile phone industry in 2024.

"AI image processing is currently the most competitive field for major manufacturers, and it is also the easiest field to show the advantages of AI. On February 22, Liu Tong, a researcher in the computer industry of a brokerage, told reporters that the AI model with the most resources has not yet appeared enough to shake the industry's products or applications, and it takes a longer time to wait and see, "For consumers, the absolute advantage of AI mobile phones is difficult to show in a short period of time."

Front-line mobile phone clerks: AI is not attractive enough

Sora, which was born in February, has once again refreshed people's perception of AIGC. After text and images, Wensheng video technology represented by Sora has shown great potential to subvert the film and television industry.

In the mobile phone industry, "AI mobile phones" are recognized as "next-generation mobile phones". "AI mobile phones will be the third major stage of change in the mobile phone industry after feature phones and smart phones. In the era of AI mobile phones, the mobile phone industry and user experience will usher in revolutionary changes. Liu Zuohu, chief product officer of OPPO, said at the AI strategy conference on February 20.

Compared to other hardware, a carry-on, small, and lightweight mobile phone is indeed an ideal carrier for AI. Guohai Securities pointed out in the research report that as far as mobile phones are concerned, their development path is: emphasizing communication functions - smart phones - personal assistants. Compared with PCs, mobile phones are terminal devices that are closer to users' lives, so users naturally have this demand.

Starting from the second half of 2023, AI mobile phones equipped with AI large models will be launched one after another. The upgraded HarmonyOS 4.0 system announced access to the Pangu large model and applied to multiple system applications of Huawei mobile phones; Samsung released the flagship Galaxy S24 series equipped with the device side AI assistant Galaxy AI, with video AI processing, AI chatbot, image processing, real-time call translation and other functions; OPPO released the world's first 7 billion device side large model mobile phone Find X7 series, with AIGC elimination function and AI large model voice summary and other functions.

However, while industry manufacturers are hot, it is difficult for first-line mobile phone stores to perceive the help of the AI concept for mobile phone sales.

The reporter recently visited a number of mobile phone sales stores in Guangzhou, and in the OPPO store, the posters and other promotional materials of the Find X7 series are marked with slogans such as "smarter AI large model", but AI is not the focus of the store staff's sales.

A store clerk told reporters that customers are still mainly concerned about taking pictures, chips, and screens, "We will take the initiative to introduce AI functions to customers, but few people will be interested, and now the attraction of AI is not strong enough." ”

In Xiaomi, Honor and other brand stores, AI did not appear in prominent areas, "In the past two years, AI has often been used in promotions, and customers may have become indifferent to these words." A clerk at a vivo store said.

A customer who is buying a mobile phone told reporters that in his opinion, there is no significant difference between AI mobile phones and other mobile phones, "(AI mobile phones) don't seem to have any special functions, and I don't usually use them." ”

Is it a "new generation of mobile phones" or a "marketing gimmick"?

What exactly is an AI mobile phone, and what is the difference between it and a smart phone? At present, the debate on the definition of AI mobile phone and the technical route has cast a shadow on the popularization and promotion of AI mobile phones.

In the eyes of ordinary consumers, a mobile phone equipped with a large model can be called an AI mobile phone. Liu Zuohu said that real AI mobile phones can make more efficient use of computing resources, keenly perceive the real world, and have strong self-learning capabilities and more abundant creative capabilities.

In its February 2024 report, IDC, a consulting agency, divided AI phones into hardware-enabled AI phones and a new generation of AI phones. Among them, the latter needs to be SoCs (mobile phone system-on-chips) that can run GenAI (generative AI) models faster and more efficiently, and have an NPU performance of at least 30 TOPS using the int-8 data type. According to this standard, only three SoCs equipped with Apple A17 Pro, MediaTek Dimensity 9300 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can be defined as a new generation of AI phones.

"AI mobile phones have higher requirements for chips and hardware. At present, the large model on the mobile phone side is still in its infancy, and there is still a gap between it and mainstream cloud-side large models such as Wenxin Yiyan and Xinghuo large models, which is also caused by the small number of parameters of the mobile phone side large model. In the future, AI's requirements for mobile phone computing power, chips, and storage will increase day by day. Liu Tong told reporters that the application side often has to wait until the hardware side is mature enough before there is room for outbreak, "I can't see what subversive applications will appear now."

According to IDC's forecast, the global shipment of next-generation AI mobile phones will reach 170 million units in 2024, accounting for nearly 15% of total smartphone shipments, a significant increase from about 51 million units shipped in 2023.

The emergence of AI mobile phones is expected to inject a "shot in the arm" into the weak mobile phone market. According to IDC data, China's smartphone market will ship about 271 million units in 2023, a year-on-year decrease of 5.0%, the lowest shipment in nearly 10 years. The imagination space brought by AI mobile phones has injected marketing highlights into the mobile phone market that has not had a new story for a long time.

"Whether it is AI image processing or voice assistants, they are still in their infancy, and the application scenarios are not mature enough. When the device-side large model is truly mature, consumers may be able to perceive the advantages of AI mobile phones. Liu Tong said.

(At the request of the interviewee, Liu Tong is a pseudonym)