Oppo's AI Vision: Smartphones as Empathetic Partners, Not Replacements
At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025, Oppo introduced its enhanced AI strategy, with an ambitious goal to bring generative AI to 100 million users globally by the end of 2025. Peter Dohyung Lee, Head of Product Strategy at Oppo, emphasized India's importance in this vision. 'India is central to our goal of bringing GenAI to 100 million global users by 2025,' Lee told India Today Tech, highlighting the country's rapid AI adoption and tech-savvy consumer base.
Since 2020, Oppo has been building its own large language models (LLMs), becoming the first smartphone brand to deploy a 7-billion-parameter LLM directly on a device. These efforts have led to the rollout of over 100 generative AI features across Oppo smartphones in 2024 alone.
AI is deeply woven into Oppo's internal and product ecosystem. From features like HyperTone Image Engine for improved photography to intelligent battery optimization via SuperVOOC charging, AI enables a smarter, more personalized user experience. Internally, the company uses AI to enhance R&D, automate testing, and streamline development.
'Our goal is simple – AI for all,' said Lee. Oppo is democratizing AI by embedding it across all product tiers, not just premium devices. The recently launched Reno 14 series is a testament to this, integrating advanced tools such as AI Eraser 2.0, AI Best Face, and productivity boosters like AI Voice Scribe and AI Translate.
Strategic collaborations with global tech leaders such as Google, Microsoft, MediaTek, and Qualcomm are helping Oppo push the boundaries of mobile AI. For instance, Google's Gemini is now integrated into Oppo's ecosystem, enabling users to perform complex tasks using natural language across apps. Microsoft's Azure AI brings improved transcription services and will soon allow PC users to control connected Oppo smartphones using Copilot.
Oppo also stresses data privacy, investing heavily in encryption, firewalls, and on-device processing to ensure responsible AI implementation. 'AI means more data, but it also means more responsibility,' Lee remarked, underlining the brand's commitment to user trust.
The Indian market, with over 690 million users, plays a critical role in this expansion. Lee observed that Indian consumers expect flagship-grade features even in mid-tier phones, which aligns with Oppo's mission to make GenAI features broadly accessible.
'The future is not about humans vs AI, but it's about humans and AI,' Lee concluded. As smartphones evolve into context-aware, real-time collaborators, Oppo envisions a future where AI enriches creativity, communication, and everyday convenience—always with empathy and user control at the forefront.
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Hindustan Times
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He was kind enough to take an inexperienced journalist seriously and explained that one of the biggest challenges in his job was keeping the prices of such popular Cadbury brands as Fruit & Nut low because Cadbury imported chocolate, and global prices were volatile. But because he did not want to disappoint the many children who loved 'Cads', as the chocolate bar was nicknamed, the company had evolved two strategies. The first was to create bars that used less of the expensive chocolate: The 5 Star was one example. This was a familiar strategy already employed in many foreign countries: 5 Star was probably inspired by the Mars Bar. Forty years ago, Cadbury was trying to persuade Indian farmers to grow the cocoa bean. (ADOBE STOCK) The second strategy involved a higher degree of difficulty. Cadbury was trying to persuade Indian farmers to grow the cocoa bean so it was less dependent on imported chocolate. The problem, he said, was that the Indian bean just didn't taste right when you turned it into chocolate. Experts from Cadbury UK had worked with local farmers, he said, and had managed to get around that problem. He thought that Cadbury would eventually be able to depend on Indian farmers for a substantial proportion of its chocolate needs. This was forty or so years ago, so there was nothing unusual about chatting to a Brit who lived in a lovely bungalow in the shadow of Cumballa Hill, about Indian farmers. And because the gobbledygook had yet to be invented, he did not use such expressions as farm-to-table or bean-to-bar or talk about Cadbury's commitment to Indian farmers or about localisation and carbon miles. He was a practical man, and his focus was on keeping the prices of his chocolates low enough for children to be able to enjoy them. I did not know enough then to discuss the decision to grow the cocoa bean in India from a historical perspective. Most food historians regard the story of chocolate as a prime example of imperialism in action. The cocoa bean was brought to Europe by Spanish invaders, who found it in South America. And the chocolate we buy today is a European/American creation. In 1847, JS Fry, an English company, invented the chocolate bar. In 1868, Cadbury invented the chocolate box. In 1879, Nestlé invented milk chocolate. In 1900, America saw the first Hershey bar, with its distinctive spoilt-milk taste. The Mars bar appeared in England in 1932. In African countries, governments force farmers to sell cocoa beans at half the global price. (ADOBE STOCK) All of these advances were based on a South American cocoa bean. Europe did not grow chocolate. So the big Western companies got the profits, while the poor South American farmers were paid a pittance. As the demand for chocolate went up, cocoa plantations were developed in Africa and in other colonies by European powers. All of the cocoa was exported to the factories of the West. That trend has continued. When you hear of the great chocolatiers of Belgium, rarely is the source of the bean mentioned. Switzerland, a country that grows no cocoa, has a global reputation for chocolate. Valrhona, a name that chefs revere, is a French company that buys its chocolate from the Third World. Nutella comes from Italy, where no cocoa grows. So, the Cadbury initiative to help farmers cultivate the cocoa bean in India was intriguing. They were not growing it for export. They were cultivating it for Indians. I thought back to my conversation with the MD of Cadbury because of two recent developments. When Manam opened a store-restaurant in Delhi, people queued up on weekends. The first is the rise in global prices of the cocoa bean. It has tripled over the last two years and hovers at around $10,000 a tonne. In many African countries, the governments compulsorily purchase beans from farmers at half the global price. This has led to a boom in cocoa smuggling, the creation of chocolate mafias and a rise in crime. It is another of colonialism's unhappy legacies. The second development that struck me was the frenzy that accompanied the opening of the large Manam Chocolate store-restaurant in Delhi. On any weekend, there are queues of people trying to get in. This is unusual because Manam, launched only in 2021, was not a brand that anyone in Delhi knew well. Nor is there any precedent for a chocolate place becoming such a rage. The connection between Manam and my chat with the Cadbury MD decades ago is the bean. While Manam does import some beans, its real claim to fame is that it mostly uses Indian cocoa beans. As Chaitanya Muppala, the 34-year-old founder of the brand, told me, they work with 150 farmers, who cultivate the bean across 3,000 acres. 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Its large Delhi restaurant-shop resembles something Willy Wonka would dream up, and many of the hundreds of people who throng there each day come out of sheer wonder not just out of love of chocolate. Chaitanya now has successful restaurant-shops in Hyderabad and Delhi. I imagine Mumbai and Bangalore will be next. Everyone who has tried his chocolate only has good things to say, and his PR operation is superb and formidable. While he obviously does not see Manam as an industrial operation, most of which are based on poor-quality raw material, he doesn't see it as an artisanal operation either. He makes craft chocolate, he says. And what is craft chocolate? It's chocolate that is all about the bean and its flavours. A hugely successful chocolate company based on the Indian bean? Who would have thought we would get to this stage when Cadbury first planted beans in India? It's an amazing achievement, not just because the chocolate is so good, but because it reverses colonial history. This is Indian chocolate, Chaitanya says, made for Indians, by Indians from Indian beans. From HT Brunch, August 09, 2025 Follow us on
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