Here Comes Huawei

Market research firm IDC recently said that Huawei is likely to become the company with the second-largest share in the global smartphone market this year or next year by beating Apple.

One year ago, Huawei’s and Apple’s market shares had been 9.4% and 11.9%, respectively. In the second quarter of this year, however, the figures were 11.3% and 12.0%. Huawei recently unveiled the Mate 10 equipped with the Kirin 970 chipset, an artificial intelligence (AI) chipset it developed on its own. Apple has its own AI chipset, A11, whereas Samsung Electronics is yet to unveil its AI chipset. Samsung Electronics’ first smartphone equipped with an AI chipset is expected to be the Galaxy S9, which is scheduled to make its debut early next year.

According to market research firm Counterpoint, the ratio of smartphones coming with an AI chipset is estimated to increase from 3% to 35% between this year and 2020. “In step with the development of AI chipset technology, smartphones will evolve to understand the patterns of the use of smartphones and provide users with the work they need such as natural language processing, real-time translation and automatic picture setting,” it explained.

At present, Samsung Electronics is working on the Internet of Things (IoT) and AI as two of its future growth drivers. The company is planning to incorporate its AI assistant Bixby into a variety of home appliances as well as smartphones and make the SDK public so that anyone can use it.