Fiercely competitive smartphone market shifts focus from hardware features to virtual brainpower

Zhao Ming, president of Huawei's Honor Brand, delivers a speech at the launch ceremony for their AI phone Honor V10. [PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY]

Many commentators have deemed 2017 to be year one for the artificial intelligence smartphone as iPhone X and Honor V10 launched into the highly competitive but uniform cellphone market. So will an intelligent phone be the next great breakthrough?

The smartphone competition battlefield has shifted from pursuit of super-slimness, dual-cameras, fast-charging to full screen, yet none of these hardware features lies at the core of phone manufacturers' competitiveness, explained Zhao Ming, president of Honor – a phone brand of Huawei.

According to a China Academy of Information and Communications Technology report, cellphone shipments by domestic brands reached 3.19 million in October, down 15.4 percent year on year. Similar features and designs make domestic smartphone players swim in the highly competitive, margin-eroding "Red Ocean".

The smartphone market's future lies in the prospect that an intelligent handset can serve as a personal assistant for users’ daily lives, taking care of their needs and letting amateurs become masters, empowered by state-of-the-art AI technology.

Last month Honor launched its full-screen V10 smartphone with AI-enabled chipset in Beijing. The new handset promises fresh, exciting AI features; it supports face-unlock technology – the screen will light up automatically when the owner gazes at it.

The phone can identify 13 kinds of scene and improve parameters in photo shooting and video recording. The more consumers use the AI-empowered phone, the more data it collects. The handset in your pocket will know you better and function in a more nuanced way to make your life easier.

Younger appeal

Honor, launched four years ago in 2013, has thrived by taking advantage of its parent company Huawei's well-established name.

The brand, which sells its products primarily online, has issued several flagship phones which have been well-received by the market; it has become a pioneer in the intelligent phone field.

"We give unique identities to Huawei and Honor. Huawei Mate are our flagship phones that boast upscale business style, while many of the functions we put in Honor are appealing to young people," noted Zhao.

Highlights of the latest model include 30 sets of mobile phone WLAN co-broadcast music and optimizing performance when the users play the smash-hit game King of Glory.

The cost-effective internet business model has let the brand sell models to younger consumers at 1,000 yuan ($151) to 3,000 yuan.

Honor V10 is priced at 2,699 yuan for the 4GB RAM/64GB internal storage variant and 3,499 yuan for 6GB RAM/128GB internal storage variant.