Baidu, a big tech company in China, has teamed up with Lenovo, a popular smartphone maker. They’re putting Baidu’s smart AI technology, called Ernie large language model, into Lenovo phones. Baidu has done similar partnerships with other phone companies like Samsung and Honor. This helps Baidu get more into the mobile market and reach more people.
Lenovo is a multinational technology company headquartered in Beijing, China, and Morrisville, North Carolina. It is known for manufacturing a wide range of products, including personal computers, smartphones, tablets, and smart home devices. While Baidu is also a leading technology company headquartered in Beijing, China. Founded in 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu, Baidu has grown into one of the largest and most influential internet companies in the world.
Lenovo, is now adding Baidu’s Ernie model to its own smartphones. This decision is all about joining the trend of using AI in phones, which is getting more and more popular. It all started after ChatGPT, made by OpenAI, became a hit towards the end of 2022.
While Google’s Pixel phones are known for their advanced AI features, supported by powerful cloud-based AI services, Apple is said to be developing its own generative AI models for iPhones. The team-up between Baidu and Lenovo shows they’re both aiming to compete in this area and give users cool AI features like chatbots and instant translation, all on their smartphones.
Research from Canalys estimates that about 5% of smartphones shipped worldwide in 2024—roughly 60 million devices—will come with AI capabilities. This indicates that more and more people are interested in smartphones with AI features, expecting that these features could become really important for users in the future.
In China, where AI services from American companies aren’t easily accessible, local companies like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent lead the way with more than 200 AI models on offer. Baidu CEO Robin Li has told the importance of using AI in practical ways. He’s worked closely with smartphone makers to make Baidu’s LLM even better. This has helped Baidu become a strong competitor against American companies.
Besides Lenovo, other popular Chinese phone brands like Vivo, Xiaomi, and Huawei are also putting efforts into developing their own AI models for their devices. However, they haven’t shared many details about these projects publicly.
Industry experts see adding Baidu’s LLM to smartphones as a smart move, setting up AI-powered features as possible must-haves down the road, even with some limits now. These partnerships not only help Baidu but also give access to large amounts of data, which could improve the capabilities of Baidu’s AI models and make it more competitive in the worldwide smartphone market.
The partnership between Baidu and Lenovo shows how AI is becoming more and more important in smartphones. This partnership is part of a bigger trend where companies are using smart AI technology to make our phone experiences better. This means we’ll likely see even cooler features and better user experiences as AI technology keeps improving.
