With Generative AI, the Mobile Industry Will Experience a new Momentum

By Chris Patrick, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mobile Handsets, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Credit: Qualcomm Incorporated

In the fast-paced world of technology, smartphones have been at the forefront of driving innovation, becoming an essential part of users’ daily lives. Over the decades, smartphones underwent a series of mobile transformations, with each iteration bringing new advancements to the industry. From the early days of bulky, standard mobile devices to the sleek and feature-rich smartphones we use today, the industry has continuously pushed forward defining new capabilities and mobile use cases.
 

The Mobile Momentum – Key moments of technology changing the industry 

Early innovations from mobile disruptors transformed the way users interacted with devices, making them more intuitive and user friendly. The flip phone, for instance, revolutionized mobile design by introducing a front screen that altered the way devices operated, all while offering the convenience of a compact size for easy portability. While the advent of touchscreen technology marked a significant evolution for smartphones, improving accessibility with simple touch and swipe gestures, and enriching entertainment through seamless streaming and gaming. These developments have redefined the mobile experience, setting new standards for ease of use and device interaction.

Later on, App Stores provided a revolutionary platform for developers to distribute their applications, connecting them directly with a vast audience. This shift was equally transformative for consumers, offering new ways to discover and instantly download apps directly to their devices.

More recently, the introduction of 5G technology revolutionized connectivity by offering exceptionally fast speeds that linked everyone and everything together more efficiently than ever before. Users can now enjoy faster download and upload speeds, high-definition content streaming without buffering, more reliable video calls, and enhanced online gaming experiences. This technology has facilitated a more interconnected digital ecosystem, bridging the gap between various devices to enhance overall digital interaction.

All of these transformations have achieved incredible feat. Today, personalized assistants are evolving, becoming more intelligent by utilizing context and data to deliver tailored personal responses based on health data, location, hyperlocal information, and more rather than providing generic responses. This shift, driven by the integration of multimodal AI, marks a significant transformation in the market.
 

AI Is the New Change – Revolutionizing AI on Smartphones

For years, mobile industry members have invested in research to drive the change and provide AI-based solutions to the market that enhance everyday life – it is only now reaching consumers’ hands. AI is becoming a staple in daily tech use, setting the stage for more advanced, intuitive AI applications. The deep integration of AI enables new features to run natively, leveraging technologies like Semantic Search for easy and accurate results, AI Noise Cancellation to reduce noise in loud and uncontrollable environments, AI Call Translator and Transcript to help with real-time seamless interactions, and AI Wallpaper to provide personalized images based on individual preferences.

These changes are impacting the smartphone market. According to Canalys research, the global smartphone market experienced a significant resurgence in the first quarter of 2024, with sales reaching 296.2 million units.  This marked the first time in ten quarters that the market saw such exciting growth, largely fueled by the buzz surrounding the commercial introduction of Generative AI in smartphones.
 

Examples of AI - The Need of On-Device Gen AI Use Cases 

On-device processing is emerging as a transformative force, unlocking new capabilities across mobile platforms. It enables the generation of unique, personalized content, offering real-time solutions – whether in a professional setting, at home, or on the move. Its impact spans, multiple sectors including PCs, cars, VR/AR, networking and IoT devices.

Running LLMs and other AI tools on-device significantly boosts performance, security, and privacy, ensuring that sensitive data is protected from unauthorized access and breaches, while also enabling smoother, more cost-efficient, and faster interactions as processes are managed locally. The trend towards on-device AI is clear, with companies investing decades in research and development to commercialize efficient on-device AI processing, including complex neural networks.

As the industry progresses, the significance of responsible AI becomes paramount. It is crucial for AI systems to be safe, reliable, unbiased, and environmentally sustainable as they are deployed. Additionally, the ecosystem must adhere to the latest AI regulations to ensure best practices are followed.

With the shift towards on-device processing and the numerous opportunities that come with it, there are various ways for platforms to run these AI workloads that can be complimentary on-device AI. For instance, cloud-based processing can complement on-device AI with real-time data for enhanced functionality and performance, choosing what should go to cloud vs. native to device. Mobile heterogeneous computing is another approach that utilizes multiple different types of processing, such as GPU and CPU, to run AI workloads. As stated by Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm Incorporated President & CEO, last year in the Fortune Op-Ed, “You could embed [the AI] in every office application: You get an email, it suggests a response. You’re going to need the ability to run those things locally as well as on the data center.”
 

The Future of On-Device AI in Smartphones 

A study from Counterpoint Research estimates the installed base of Generative AI-enabled phones will exceed 1 billion by 2027. There has already been an increase in mobile devices coming into the market designed with Generative AI in mind, and reaching more users is key to strengthening the mobile ecosystem. This will increase shipment quantities and demand for more AI-based tools and resources, to drive competition and build upon the momentum of AI for smartphones. Industry members will also cultivate different priorities within the smartphone tiers for premium and base model devices.

The landscape of generative AI is a transformative milestone as it moves from the cloud to on-device. This shift will empower mobile platforms to accommodate more LLMs (large language models), improve data efficiency, and increase memory capacity and bandwidth to generate diverse content types, including text, images, and video.

Users will be able to optimize on these enhanced mobile experiences daily, from using on-device AI assistant to schedule a dinner reservation to editing a single photo quickly, as more AI-designed devices become commercially available. Generative AI assistants will continue to evolve into indispensable and ubiquitous companions, utilizing user preferences to offer more personalized, reliable interactions.
 

The Journey of Innovation 

The mobile industry has made remarkable strides to reach today’s era of AI-powered smartphones. Looking towards the future, AI will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping the smartphone landscape, unlocking new possibilities, and transforming the industry once again.

To support the increasing demand for AI-enhanced models and technologies in smartphone, the need for a powerful CPU is essential. Incorporating a custom CPU architecture designed for AI in the mobile platform will redefine the possibilities of using AI on-device. This leads to faster performance, extended battery life, and optimized data handling. A custom CPU facilitates a more seamless integration compared to external solutions, allowing other components, such as the NPU and GPU to better support AI use cases.

With everything integrated together, the importance of enhancing widespread connectivity, integrated platform solutions, and efficient performance levels has never been greater. These advancements are key to widening the scope of AI use cases in smartphones, ensuring that the industry not only matches the pace of technological developments but also establishes new standards for innovation and user experience.