We are entering era of AI-capable phones: Huawei
Chinese smartphone-maker's Mate 10 series features artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to be one of the central battlegrounds in the ultra-competitive smartphone industry in the coming years.
Leading phone-makers Apple, Samsung and now, Huawei, have all introduced premium phones with AI capabilities.
China's Huawei, the world's third biggest smartphone-maker by shipment last year, is hoping its latest Mate 10 series, launched on Monday at the Olympiapark in Munich, Germany, will help boost its standing in the premium segment.
Huawei consumer business group's senior director of product marketing Tom Chen believes the introduction of AI will open up a vast array of usage that will further enhance the user experience.
"We are entering a new era in the development of smartphones with AI capabilities that will be more pro-active and automatic," he said in an interview on Tuesday.
"I can foresee phone-makers will introduce more mobile AI-capable phones, like these from Huawei, over the next year."
Mobile AI applications will mostly be centred on three services - natural language processing, audio recognition and image recognition, he said.
Expect to see quicker and more accurate language translation, automatic settings for different kinds of photography and background features that enhance the audio performance.
"This is the first step in the introduction of AI in phones. With more such phones in the market, it will empower more third-party developers to develop real-time applications that can fully utilise such capabilities," said Mr Chen.
The healthy competition among the major phone-makers is beneficial for the industry as it will stimulate the development of new ideas from independent and industry developers, he added.
"This cannot be done by one company alone. There is no limit to who Huawei can work with to develop these apps... We are collaborating with Microsoft, Google and Facebook," said Mr Chen.
The Mate 10, priced from $888, will be available in Singapore from Oct 28.
The details for the Mate 10 Pro and Porsche Design Mate 10 will be announced at the Singapore launch on Oct 26.
Get The New Paper on your phone with the free TNP app. Download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store now
