• OPPO has confirmed its commitment to making AI phones accessible to all of its users.
• The company is partnering with the likes of Google, Mediatek, and IDC in order to make it happen.
• It is also targeting to deliver generative AI functionality to 50 million users by the end of 2024.

Like several other phone makers in 2024, OPPO has signalled its intent to bring generative AI (genAI) functionality to its ecosystem, with the Reno11 series earmarked earlier in the year.

While that device is not heading to South Africa in an official capacity, genAI is still heading to South Africa via OPPO phones, as the company confirmed its commitment to make AI phone functionality available across all of its lineups.

It is leveraging the collaborative efforts of some big partners to do so, with OPPO holding an event recently with Google, Mediatek, and IDC to unpack some of the plans it has in mind for AI phones this year.

More specifically, OPPO is ambitiously aiming to make AI phone functionality available to a large number of users by the end of the year.

While not present at the event, Microsoft too has been outlined as a partner for the phone maker.

“With our relentless efforts and commitment, OPPO aims to make AI phones accessible to everyone. For the first time in the industry, OPPO is bringing generative AI to all product lines. By the end of this year, we expect to bring generative AI features to about 50 million users,” noted Billy Zhang (pictured below), president of Overseas MKT, Sales and Service at the company.

This sentiment has been echoed by research firm IDC, which has advocated for the democratisation of AI tech. To date, only a handful of flagship smartphones have showcased genAI capabilities, prompting many to wonder when the technology will filter down to devices in a more affordable price bracket.

“According to IDC, shipments for AI phones in the sub-US$1000 segment are expected to grow by 250% in 2024, reaching 35 million units. Generative AI is increasingly entering everyday life via phones, enhancing experiences across entertainment, mobile officing, and more,” the company shared in a release with Hypertext.

This is one of the key objectives that OPPO has laid out with its AI plans

Here the company explained that it has been making investments in AI over the past decade, with over 5 000 patents related to AI inventions having been filed. Approximately 70 percent are specifically related to AI imaging, the company added, which likely means this is the first area we will see future OPPO phones focus much of the AI attention and capability.

On top of this, OPPO said it is actively working on the development of its own Large Language Models (LLMs) and has been active in large vision models and multimodal technology. Here it is the first smartphone company to deploy an LLM with 7 billion parameters directly on the device. 

“In partnership with Google, OPPO’s Reno12 series and the next-generation Find X Flagship will feature the Google Gemini family LLMs, bringing OPPO users even more innovative and convenient AI features such as AI Toolbox including AI Writer and AI Recording Summary features,” it continued

“In collaboration with MediaTek, both parties are tuning chips to enhance chip storage and computational efficiency on future OPPO flagship models. And through its partnership with Microsoft, the next-generation OPPO phones will be equipped with Microsoft capabilities to bring a more efficient, accurate, and natural voice and text conversion experience and improved connectivity between desktop AI and phones,” the company highlighted.

South Africans won’t have to wait too much longer to see this in action on the Reno12 series, with local listings for the device already popping up online, and OPPO expected to officially launch the lineup in SA later this month.

With Samsung’s Galaxy AI being the other notable instance of genAI on a commercially available smartphone to date, it will be interesting to see how OPPO’s version performs, as well as how quickly the company can filter it into other device lineups.

[Images – Provided]