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.



Google, Volkswagen Partner on Smartphone AI Assistant

People walk next to a Google logo during a trade fair in Hannover Messe, in Hanover, Germany, April 22, 2024. (Reuters)
People walk next to a Google logo during a trade fair in Hannover Messe, in Hanover, Germany, April 22, 2024. (Reuters)
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Google, Volkswagen Partner on Smartphone AI Assistant

People walk next to a Google logo during a trade fair in Hannover Messe, in Hanover, Germany, April 22, 2024. (Reuters)
People walk next to a Google logo during a trade fair in Hannover Messe, in Hanover, Germany, April 22, 2024. (Reuters)

Alphabet’s Google is providing key capabilities for an artificial intelligence assistant for Volkswagen drivers in a smartphone app, part of Google's strategy to win business by offering tools to build enterprise AI applications.

Consumers can ask Volkswagen's in-app assistant questions like "How do I change a flat tire?" or point their phone cameras at vehicle dashboards to receive relevant information.

The AI assistant draws on Google's Gemini large language models, programs that can understand and generate predictive responses to human language, and cloud computing capacity. The VW tool was designed by adding data such as Volkswagen owner’s manuals and YouTube videos on vehicle maintenance to Gemini.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told Reuters that the product required overcoming technical hurdles to multimodality, the ability to process different data types such as text, images and videos.

"The problem looks superficially simple, but it’s technically very complex," Kurian said. "Most people think what we built is a speech-to-text translation system that then looks up a manual. Absolutely not."

The AI assistant is free and available to about 120,000 owners of Volkswagen’s Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport models. It will roll out by early next year to other cars from model year 2020 and later.

Corporate adoption of generative AI could alter the lucrative cloud computing market, where Google places third in terms of market share behind Amazon and Microsoft . Most companies are still searching for applications that users will find practical.

Cloud computing is a growing business segment for Google, accounting for $33 billion of the firm's $307 billion in overall revenue in 2023.

AI solutions have driven billions in revenue this year, the company has said, though it declined to disclose more precise figures.

Volkswagen declined to give details about usage for its AI assistant so far.