Huawei Says it Has Made Huge Strides, from Operating Systems to AI 

A view shows a Huawei logo at Huawei Technologies France headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, France, February 17, 2021. (Reuters) 
A view shows a Huawei logo at Huawei Technologies France headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, France, February 17, 2021. (Reuters) 
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Huawei Says it Has Made Huge Strides, from Operating Systems to AI 

A view shows a Huawei logo at Huawei Technologies France headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, France, February 17, 2021. (Reuters) 
A view shows a Huawei logo at Huawei Technologies France headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris, France, February 17, 2021. (Reuters) 

China's Huawei Technologies said on Friday it had made breakthroughs in fields from operating systems to artificial intelligence, and that it had taken the company 10 years to do what the United States and Europe took 30 years to achieve.

Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei's Consumer Business Group, was speaking at the opening of a three-day developer conference in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan, where he said the company's Harmony operating system was now available on more than 900 million devices.

"Harmony has made major breakthroughs. You can say in 10 years we've achieved what it took our European and American counterparts more than 30 years to do, in terms of building the core technology of an independent operating system," Yu said.

The company's Ascend artificial intelligence infrastructure - the most powerful from a Chinese company - was now the second most popular after Nvidia, which dominates the market for AI chips, Yu added.

Operating systems and other software have been dominated by Europe and the United States for a long time, although the era of internet of things has given Huawei an opportunity to overtake them, he said.

In the first quarter of 2024, Huawei's HarmonyOS, its in-house version of the operating system, surpassed Apple's iOS to become the second best-selling mobile operating system in China behind Android with a 17% market share, research firm Counterpoint said.



UK Clears Amazon's AI Partnership with Anthropic

The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
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UK Clears Amazon's AI Partnership with Anthropic

The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Britain's competition regulator said on Friday Amazon's artificial intelligence partnership with startup Anthropic will not be referred for a deeper probe as it did not raise competition concerns.

The Competition and Markets Authority said the partnership, which includes a $4 billion investment by Amazon in Anthropic, did not qualify for investigation under Britain's merger regulations.

"We welcome the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) decision acknowledging its lack of jurisdiction regarding this collaboration," an Amazon spokesperson said in response to the regulator's decision, according to Reuters.

The regulator has also cleared a similar collaboration between Microsoft and Inflection AI.

However, Alphabet's partnership with Anthropic is still under scrutiny.

"Anthropic is an independent company and our strategic partnerships and investor relationships do not diminish our corporate governance independence or freedom to partner with others," an Anthropic spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.

Anthropic, which was co-founded by former OpenAI executives and siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, has received billions of dollars in investments from several tech giants.

Antitrust regulators around the world have increasingly raised concerns over multiple deals struck between smaller industry startups and big tech companies.