Since October 2024, the wave of new mobile phone launches by manufacturers has arrived as scheduled, even surging forward, creating a sense of one brand stepping down as another steps up.

As we all know, press conferences remain an important marketing front and stage for mobile phone manufacturers to showcase their strength. However, only vivo has held three press conferences within a month, which is rare in the current economic climate that is still on the rise.

The smartphone market is no longer the golden era of surging user numbers and enthusiasm. Consumers' phone replacement frequency has slowed down, and factors that prompted them to make impulsive purchases have greatly decreased.

Reducing staff while increasing efficiency and spending money wisely are also choices made by many manufacturers. Even if there are multiple new products, most manufacturers choose to concentrate their launches in a single press conference.

Why did vivo choose to hold concentrated press conferences? What new products and strategies did vivo introduce at these three conferences? Behind these strategies, what are vivo's thoughts on the future development of mobile phones?

The race heats up, and vivo bets on AI mobile phones

In recent years, the slowdown of the domestic smartphone market is an undeniable fact. But this year, the smartphone market has ushered in a warm spring. According to Counterpoint Research's data report, domestic smartphone sales increased by 1.5% in the first quarter of this year and further rebounded to 6% in the second quarter.

According to the latest quarterly tracking report on smartphones released by a market research institution on October 25th, shipments of smartphones in the Chinese market amounted to approximately 68.78 million units in the third quarter of 2024, representing a year-on-year increase of 3.2%, achieving four consecutive quarters of year-on-year growth.

At the same time, the domestic mobile phone market is undergoing a key change: Apple's market share has been declining. In the reports on smartphone shipments in the Chinese market for the second quarter of 2024 released by Canalys and IDC, Apple failed to make it into the top five.

Samsung's retreat from China has evoked much lament, and the leader in smartphones, Apple, is also showing signs of decline in the Chinese market. The intensity of market competition is evident. Although Apple still maintains a certain influence in the domestic market, it is undeniable that domestic smartphone brands have achieved a shift from defense to offense. Among them, vivo's sales and shipments rank first in multiple reports, surpassing other mobile phone manufacturers, including Apple.

The smartphone market has always been fiercely competitive, especially in the current situation where there is not much market growth. vivo is still able to secure a larger share, which is inseparable from its grasp of market strategies and investment in technological research and development. The above achievements are the result of rapid product enhancement through investment.

In fact, vivo has its unique strategic positioning in dual-brand construction. Unlike most mobile phone manufacturers that choose to distinguish their positioning by high and low ends, vivo's dual-brand strategy targets segmented groups, making user positioning more precise. The two brands, vivo and iQOO, appeal to users who pursue a sense of sophistication on the one hand and those who seek extreme cost-effectiveness on the other.

The most important of vivo's three conferences in October was the 2024 vivo Developer Conference. At the conference, vivo officially announced its new AI strategy, "Blue Heart Intelligence," along with a comprehensively upgraded self-developed Blue Heart large model matrix, OriginOS 5, BlueOS 2, and vivo's latest achievements in security, humanities, ecological cooperation, and other areas.

The next two conferences were separate flagship phone launches for vivo and iQOO. The all-new vivo X200 series flagship phones were launched on the evening of October 14th at the National Aquatics Center (Water Cube) in Beijing. As a domestic flagship series, the vivo X200 series brings together four comprehensively upgraded vivo Blue Technologies for the first time, delivering an "all-in-one, multi-functional" annual flagship phone.

The annual e-sports performance flagship, the iQOO 13, was launched on October 30th. The iQOO 13 is the first to carry the Blue Crystal × Snapdragon 8 Ultimate Edition chip and the self-developed e-sports chip Q2, bringing PC-level gaming visuals. The 2K Q10 Everest Screen, jointly created with BOE, sets a new benchmark for screens in 2024. It is worth mentioning that iQOO is considered a successful sub-brand among mobile phone manufacturers. According to data, iQOO's market share has exceeded 5%.

In recent years, with the rapid development of AI technology, AI functions have increasingly permeated various aspects of daily life. As a mass consumer electronic product, users' demand for intelligent functions and services on mobile phones has also continued to rise.

According to Counterpoint's forecast, from 2024 to 2027, the market penetration rate of AI mobile phones will jump from 11% to 43%, which means that the mainstream mobile phone market will gradually be occupied by AI mobile phones in the future.

This requires manufacturers to invest more resources in technological research and development. vivo is also generous in research and development. Public data shows that vivo's annual research and development expenses have exceeded 10 billion yuan every year since 2019.

vivo's investment in the AI field is also considerable. According to public data, as of October 2024, vivo's investment in the AI field has exceeded 23 billion yuan, and the number of R&D personnel in the AI Research Institute has increased from 1,000 in 2019 to over 2,000.

Amid the wave of large AI models, vivo turned to AI mobile phones and took a seat at the table early. In a rapidly changing era, being the first to take a seat at the table is undoubtedly crucial.

What kind of phone is an AI phone?

How to make an AI phone?

This is a brand-new, hardcore field. vivo's past experience in product development has been to listen to users' voices. Initially, vivo also wanted to reuse this path and spent five months conducting user and market research. However, no one knew how AI and mobile phones should be integrated, and there were no precedents.

Without a clear path or reliance on past experience, all mobile phone manufacturers are feeling their way in the dark.

Voices in the market are also inconsistent. Although AI is hyped up, when applied to actual scenarios, for a long time afterward, people maintained a cautious acceptance but practically distant attitude towards AI, believing that AI should be positioned as a "co-pilot" at this stage rather than becoming mainstream.

Even within vivo, although investment in R&D in the AI field is certain, the team has different voices regarding investment in segmented large AI model technologies. A vivo executive revealed that the R&D team wanted to continue investing in the development of large voice models but faced internal skepticism, believing that the imagination space was not large.

Although many companies are already working on large voice models in the AI field with relatively mature technology, there has been no further breakthrough. In vivo's view, making AI mobile phones requires looking not only at the present but also at the future. Once a more natural and intuitive interaction emerges, it will bring a huge breakthrough and change in the user experience.

Returning to the essence of mobile phones, the answer to how to make an AI phone becomes clearer. Ultimately, the vivo team anchored on the three keywords of intelligence, warmth, and proactiveness.

AI should not be limited to being a "co-pilot." In vivo's view, mobile phones are not mysterious; they are the terminals we rely on for life and work.

At the first conference in October, the 2024 vivo Developer Conference, vivo announced its new AI strategy, re-examined the positioning of AI in mobile phones, and proposed three levels of reconstruction: reconstructing the interactive experience between humans and devices, the service experience between humans and the digital world, and the communication experience between humans and the physical world.

vivo wants AI to be more than just a "little helper" plugin but to be able to play an active role, better understand user intentions, and proactively provide users with simple, efficient, and warm services. Unlike grand and distant narratives, vivo's AI strategy reveals a simple aspiration.

However, to truly achieve the three levels of reconstruction, it is not simply about AI-ifying one or two functions but requires the systematic construction of an AI system. vivo's founder and CEO Shen Wei often says, "Don't think about winning with one move." Therefore, while using AI to empower product functions, vivo has also built a series of systematic public capabilities, opened them up to ecological developers, and created some exemplary intelligent entities to guide the future direction of the ecosystem.

vivo's Action: Dual-Brand Flagship AI Transformation

Needless to say, AI technology is only the foundation, and products are the entry point for users' actual experiences and feelings.

Less than half a month after elaborating on its new AI strategy, vivo and iQOO successively launched their annual flagship phones through two conferences. Undoubtedly, the new phones of the two brands are based on the new AI strategy.

Therefore, the products you see have clear functional threads, all centered around providing users with more personalized and intelligent services.

To make AI more user-friendly, vivo integrates its self-developed Blue Heart large model into the system layer of OriginOS 5, comprehensively upgrading previous function-level AI to system-level AI, making human-computer interaction smoother. The newly released vivo X200 series and iQOO 13 both carry OriginOS 5, enabling intelligent recommendations for apps that may be needed based on user operation intentions and other functions.

Based on different brand positionings, the vivo X200 series uses AI to enhance its imaging strengths. Its self-developed Blue Map imaging algorithm matrix can enhance image quality and apply various portrait algorithms for better and easier photography.

The iQOO 13 series enhances the gaming experience for users through AI. It is understood that the "AI Texture Rendering Algorithm" adopted by the iQOO 13 series can perform secondary rendering of various details in the game to solve the problem of image quality loss caused by violent sharpening after resolution enhancement, a common practice in the industry.

Through the three conferences, vivo's approach is clear: technology as the foundation, AI taking the lead, with vivo and iQOO dual brands precisely serving segmented groups, and AI serving as the underlying theme.

Shi Yujian, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of vivo, said that the AI era has arrived, and vivo will always maintain an open mindset. Whether it is in mobile phone hardware, large AI models, operating systems, or the Internet and IoT fields, vivo will adhere to user-oriented technological innovation and continuously explore the boundaries of technology.

This is a major declaration by vivo in the direction of AI.

Conclusion

The emergence of large language models has brought fundamental changes to the mobile phone industry, representing an important opportunity for the upgrade and iteration of smartphones.

Last November, vivo publicly unveiled its self-developed Blue Heart large model for the first time, which includes five large models with parameters ranging from one billion to one trillion. The fully self-developed BlueOS and OriginOS 4 were also unveiled simultaneously, along with the launch of its own technology brand, Blue Technology.

This marked the beginning of vivo's understanding and experimentation with AI mobile phones. And this year's three conferences are precisely vivo's declaration of "AI to the end."

Mobile phones, which everyone owns, are the scenario with the lowest threshold for users to use AI. The closer it is to users, the higher the frequency and the more data there will be. Therefore, it can be predicted that the application of AI in mobile phones will experience explosive growth. Empowered by AI, the prospects for smartphones are vast and far from reaching their ceiling.