Latest news with #HonorAlphaPlan
Zawya
04-03-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Honor invests $10bln in Alpha Plan to mesh AI across devices and ecosystems
Honor has unveiled an ambitious new corporate strategy that will see the company transform from a smartphone maker into a global AI device ecosystem company. The Honor Alpha Plan, announced ahead of MWC 2025 in Barcelona, outlines a three-step roadmap for converging AI-powered services across devices and ecosystems. At the core of this transformation is a $10bn investment over the next five years, focused on developing an intelligent phone that will "revolutionise human-to-device interaction" and creating a comprehensive AI ecosystem that spans smartphones, PCs, tablets, and wearables. "It is clear that the AI revolution will reshape the paradigm of the device industry – completely transforming our productivity, our society, and even our culture more than ever before," said James Li, CEO of Honor. "I am calling on all of us to unite together to address the challenges – as well as the many opportunities – of AI technology." The Honor Alpha Plan is made up of three progressive steps: - Intelligent phone development: Honor will work with partners to develop a new paradigm for AI devices in the agentic AI era, focusing on embedding human-centric AI that maximizes human potential. - AI ecosystem expansion: The company will open industry boundaries to co-create a new paradigm for the AI ecosystem in the physical AI era, connecting smartphones with PCs, tablets, wearables, and hearables. - Human potential maximisation: In the AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) era, Honor aims to open human potential boundaries and co-create a new paradigm for civilization. Leading AI technology innovations During the announcement, Honor demonstrated several AI innovations that will be central to its ecosystem strategy: - The world's first GUI-based personal mobile AI agent, demonstrated in collaboration with Google Cloud and Qualcomm Technologies - AiMAGE, a new imaging technology powered by Honor's AI Kernel, supporting both on-device and cloud AI models - The first all-ecosystem file-sharing technology, enabling ultra-fast transfers between iOS and Android devices - AI Deepfake detection technology coming to flagship devices in international markets According to the company, executing its Alpha Plan requires extensive industry collaboration. Representatives from Google Cloud, Qualcomm Technologies, CKH Group, Orange, Telefónica, and Vodafone joined the announcement to show support for co-developing the AI device ecosystem. "Collaboration is the fabric that weaves together the open ecosystem for AI," said Matt Waldbusser, MD of global solutions and consumer AI at Google Cloud. "We're thrilled to join hands with Honor and other industry partners to ride this disruptive wave." New commitments to consumers Additionally, Honor made significant commitments to customers and sustainability including seven years of Android OS and security updates for its Honor Magic series, starting in the EU market. The tech maker is also accelerating its sustainability initiatives, targeting operational carbon neutrality by 2040 and supply chain carbon neutrality by 2050. According to market analysts, Honor was the fifth largest AI-capable Android smartphone vendor globally in 2024, with the second-highest average selling price behind Samsung. The Alpha Plan is expected to strengthen Honor's position in the AI-enabled device market throughout 2025 and beyond. All rights reserved. © 2022. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (
Trade Arabia
03-03-2025
- Business
- Trade Arabia
Honor unveils new strategy to transition to AI device ecosystem company
Global technology brand Honor has announced the Honor Alpha Plan, a new corporate strategy to transform the company from a smartphone maker to a global leading AI device ecosystem company. The visionary three-step plan details the bold steps Honor will take to usher in the new intelligent world, and calls on the industry to co-create an open, value-sharing ecosystem that maximises human potential, ultimately benefiting all mankind. It is clear that the AI revolution will reshape the paradigm of the device industry - completely transforming our productivity, our society, and even our culture more than ever before,' said James Li, CEO of Honor. 'I am calling on all of us to unite together to address the challenges – as well as the many opportunities – of AI technology. I also call on the industry to be truly open so that we can fully embrace this exciting AI future. Let's do it together.' The new plan comprises three steps: The first step begins with the development of an intelligent phone. Honor will work with partners to open technology boundaries to co-create a new paradigm for AI devices in the agentic AI era. Next, Honor will open industry boundaries and co-create a new paradigm for AI ecosystem in the physical AI era. Finally, in the AGI era, Honor will open human potential boundaries and co-create a new paradigm for civilisation. The envisioned intelligent phone that is central to the first step will embed human-centric AI that is purpose-built to maximise human potential, including the leading AI technology Honor showcased during the keynote address. The world's first GUI-based personal mobile AI agent developed by Honor redefines daily convenience with intelligent technology. In a technology showcase in collaboration with Google Cloud and Qualcomm Technologies, Honor demonstrated how an AI agent can help make a table reservation through a third-party service while taking into consideration appointments saved in the Honor Calendar and traffic information. Honor plans to bring agentic experiences to its devices in international markets in the near future. Honor is transforming mobile photography with AiMAGE, the new brand for Honor's imaging technology. AiMAGE is powered by the AI Kernel, the industry's first solution to support device-cloud AI models. Locally, the on-device model supports a 1.3 billion parameter model to generate a 50% uplift in image clarity. The cloud counterpart benefits from a larger scale of computing resources, running a 12.4 billion parameter model to massively enhance the quality of telephoto images. Honor introduced the world's first all-ecosystem file-sharing technology. With it, users can enjoy ultra-fast speeds, whether transferring files to one or many iOS and Android devices. Additionally, the brand also announced that AI Deepfake detection will soon arrive in its latest flagship bar phones and foldable phones in international markets, the company said. -TradeArabia News Service
-Reviewer-Photo-SOURCE-Julian-Chokkattu.jpg&w=3840&q=100)
WIRED
02-03-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Honor Debuts a New AI Agent That Can Read and Understand Your Screen
The Honor UI Agent—powered by Google's Gemini 2 model—gives us a glimpse of artificial intelligent agents on Android. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu We must all hate booking a table at a restaurant because it's once again the problem tech companies are trying to solve with the power of artificial intelligence. Honor has taken the wraps off of Honor UI Agent—a 'GUI-based mobile AI agent' that claims to handle tasks on your behalf by understanding the screen's graphical user interface. Its primary demo to show off this capability? Having the agent book a restaurant, naturally, through OpenTable. WIRED had an early opportunity to see the demo ahead of the company's keynote at Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona, where Honor also announced its $10 billion Honor Alpha Plan. This long-term plan, envisioned by the Chinese company's new CEO Jian Li, is lofty and largely corporate-speak, comprised of goals like 'creating an intelligent phone" and 'open human potential boundaries and co-create a new paradigm for civilization.' What it really highlights is Honor's quick pivot into prioritizing AI development for its suite of personal technology devices. A GUI Agent In the demo, an Honor spokesperson asked Honor's UI Agent to book a table for four people, gave a time, and specified 'local food." (The AI takes location into context and understood that to mean Spanish food here in Barcelona.) What happens next is a little jarring—not in the way Google's Duplex technology was when it debuted in 2018 and had Google Assistant interact with real humans to make reservations on your behalf. Instead, you're forced to stare at Honor's screen, watching this agent run through the steps of finding a restaurant and booking a table through the OpenTable app. It doesn't quite feel 'smart" when you have to see the dull machinations of the process at work, though Honor tells me in the future its UI Agent won't need to show its homework. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu It chose a restaurant, but then couldn't complete the process as the spot it chose required a credit card to confirm a reservation, at which point the user had to take over. You can be flexible in your query—in another example, asking it to book a 'highly rated' restaurant meant it would look at reviews with high scores, though the agent doesn't do any more research than that. It's not cross-referencing OpenTable reviews with data from other parts of the web, especially since all of this data is processed on device and isn't sent to the cloud. This kind of agentic artificial intelligence is the current buzzword in the tech sphere. My colleague Will Knight recently tested an AI assistant that could browse the web and perform tasks online. Google late last year unveiled its Gemini 2 AI model trained to take actions on your behalf. It also renews the idea of a generative user interface for smartphones—at MWC 2024, we saw a few companies working on ways to interact with apps without using apps at all, instead leaning on AI assistants to generate a user interface as you issued a command. Honor's approach feels somewhat like what Rabbit—of the infamous Rabbit R1—is doing with Teach Mode, where you train its assistant manually to complete a task. There's no need to access an app's Application Programming Interface (API), which is the traditional way apps or services communicate with each other. The agent memorizes the process, allowing you to then issue the command and have it execute the task. But Honor says its self-reliant AI execution model isn't trained to follow strict steps—it's capable of multimodal screen context recognition to perform tasks autonomously. Instead of having to train the assistant to learn every single part of the OpenTable app, it is capable of understanding the semantic elements of the user interface and will follow-through with a multi-step process to execute your request. Honor highlighted that this process was more cost effective: 'Unlike competitors such as Apple, Samsung, and Google, which rely on external APIs—resulting in higher operational costs—Honor's AI Agent independently manages a wide range of tasks." Photograph: Julian Chokkattu While Honor says its UI agent uses in-house execution models, it also leverages Google's Gemini 2 large language model, which is what powers the intent recognition of your command and the 'enhanced semantic understanding' of what's on the screen. Google did not share any details about the nature of the collaboration. Honor says it has also partnered with Qualcomm to keep the data on the device and develop a personal knowledge base that learns your preferences over time. The idea is that if you tend to order the certain kinds of food in a delivery app, if you ask the agent to order on your behalf, it'll use that context to pick something it knows you like. The company says it's already employing some of these AI agents in China. At its keynote, Honor also announced that it will deliver seven years of software updates for its flagship Magic 7 Pro and upcoming devices—matching the software update policies from Google and Samsung for Pixel and Galaxy phones. It unveiled a handful of new gadgets at the show too, including the Honor Earbuds Open, Honor Watch 5 Ultra smartwatch, Honor Pad V9 tablet, and Honor MagicBook Pro 14 laptop. These devices won't be sold in the US, like most of Honor's products, but will be available in other markets. (The brand hosted WIRED at its media event at MWC 2025 and paid for a portion of our reporter's travel expenses.)
