Chinese smartphone company Honor unveiled new artificial intelligence features on Wednesday. Pictured here is CEO George Zhao delivering a speech in Shanghai on June 26, 2024.
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Honor, a subsidiary of Huawei that focuses on high-end devices, revealed on Wednesday that the latest version of its Android-based Magic operating system will focus on artificial intelligence assistants.
The company’s demonstration showed that even using vague voice commands (such as “I’m tired, order something”), the phone can automatically order coffee without the user touching the device. It uses artificial intelligence to mimic actions on a touch screen. Only human intervention is needed to complete the payment.
The AI assistant can also identify documents and send them to contacts, or make calls via social media app WeChat, all without the user touching the phone.
For Chinese devices, Honor and Baidu Partnering with other Chinese companies to develop certain AI capabilities while developing others in-house. Honor partners with Google to sell overseas devices.
The new AI features are expected to be released on Honor’s upcoming Magic 7 smartphone, which will be launched on October 30.
Magic 7 will use Qualcommof Newly released Snapdragon Elite 8 chip For mobile phones. Honor showed off its new artificial intelligence capabilities on Monday at the chipmaker’s annual event.
Chinese electronics and smartphone company Xiaomi A new phone powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Elite 8 chip will also be launched this month. Xiaomi has been less vocal about the artificial intelligence capabilities of its smartphones.
Canalys senior analyst Toby Zhu said in a phone interview on Wednesday after the Honor launch that artificial intelligence capabilities have reached a new level. New features are more likely to convince consumers to switch to other devices, he said.
“Apple faces challenges in China, but from our data, it won’t face a significant decline,” he said in Mandarin (translated by CNBC).
Apple sales decline in China
Honor, Xiaomi and Huawei have all launched foldable phones, while Apple has yet to enter the category.
About 17% of Apple’s revenue came from Greater China in the quarter ended June 29, down from 19% in the same period last year. Apple is scheduled to release quarterly results on October 31, local time.
Apple CEO Tim Cook met with Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong on Wednesday to discuss data security and cloud services, According to the ministry. Apple did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Since its launch on September 20, the price of Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max has dropped slightly on second-hand shopping platform Xianyu. On Wednesday, the device was priced between 8,000 yuan ($1,122) and 10,000 yuan, compared with 10,500 yuan to 16,300 yuan last month.
Huawei launched the three-fold Mate XT on the same day. As of Wednesday, the second-hand price of the device had dropped to about 20,000 yuan, almost half of its September 20 selling price.
—CNBC’s Dylan Butts and Sonia Heng contributed to this report.
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