Honor unveils US$10 billion investment to drive AI upgrade in smartphones, tablets
The "Alpha" investment plan would support Honor's new strategy to evolve from a smartphone maker into an ecosystem company focused on AI devices, CEO James Li Jian announced on Sunday in Barcelona ahead of the annual MWC mobile trade show.
The initiative would begin with the launch of an AI smartphone designed to change the way users interact with their handsets, eventually expanding into an ecosystem of other devices, including personal computers, tablets and wearable devices, Li said.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
Li, who took over from long-time leader George Zhao Ming in January, urged industry partners to share their AI capabilities to create a platform for multiple AI-powered devices.
Former Huawei executive James Li Jian was appoint CEO of Honor earlier this year. Photo: Handout alt=Former Huawei executive James Li Jian was appoint CEO of Honor earlier this year. Photo: Handout>
"This includes the industry becoming truly open, enabling seamless collaboration across different operating systems, and building a value-sharing AI device ecosystem," he said.
The announcement comes as the Shenzhen-based smartphone maker seeks a new direction following a management reshuffle. The new leadership is grappling with fierce competition in the smartphone market, which is expected to intensify as manufacturers race to upgrade their devices with new AI features.
Last week, Honor said it integrated Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek's R1 model into its Yoyo virtual assistant and search engine for smartphones and laptops.
In China, Honor has been collaborating with tech giants including Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings and ByteDance to provide AI capabilities on its smartphones. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Internationally, Honor partners with Google to incorporate Gemini AI models into its devices.
Honor is doubling down on AI after integrating DeepSeek's R1 model into its smartphone virtual assistant. Photo: Reuters alt=Honor is doubling down on AI after integrating DeepSeek's R1 model into its smartphone virtual assistant. Photo: Reuters>
Honor, which Huawei Technologies sold to a consortium of buyers in 2020 following US sanctions, has been facing increasing competition in its home market, where its share has declined.
The brand's China smartphone shipments fell 14.9 per cent year on year in the fourth quarter last year, the largest drop among the top five vendors, according to research firm IDC. It ranked fifth with a 13.7 per cent share, down from 16.8 per cent a year earlier and trailing Apple, Vivo, Huawei and Xiaomi.
Despite the challenges, Honor has been gaining ground in some overseas markets. Its shipments in the Middle East surged 67 per cent last year, reaching 3.2 million units, according to research firm Canalys.
The company also surpassed Samsung Electronics to become the leading foldable handset maker in western Europe in the second quarter of last year, according to Counterpoint Research.
Honor announced plans earlier this month to launch more than 30 products in Indonesia in 2025 as part of its ongoing international expansion.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hamilton Spectator
35 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
BlackRock® Canada Announces Final July Cash Distributions for the iShares® Premium Money Market ETF
TORONTO, July 25, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited ('BlackRock Canada'), an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE: BLK), today announced the final July 2025 cash distributions for iShares Premium Money Market ETF. Unitholders of record on July 28, 2025, will receive cash distributions payable on July 31, 2025. Details regarding the final 'per unit' distribution amounts are as follows: Further information on the iShares ETFs can be found at . About BlackRock BlackRock's purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, we help millions of people build savings that serve them throughout their lives by making investing easier and more affordable. For additional information on BlackRock, please visit | Twitter: @BlackRockCA About iShares ETFs iShares unlocks opportunity across markets to meet the evolving needs of investors. With more than twenty years of experience, a global line-up of 1600+ exchange traded funds (ETFs) and US$4.7 trillion in assets under management as of June 30, 2025, iShares continues to drive progress for the financial industry. iShares funds are powered by the expert portfolio and risk management of BlackRock. iShares® ETFs are managed by BlackRock Canada. Commissions, trailing commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with investing in iShares ETFs. Please read the relevant prospectus before investing. The funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated. Tax, investment and all other decisions should be made, as appropriate, only with guidance from a qualified professional. Contact for Media: Sydney Punchard Email:
Business Journals
an hour ago
- Business Journals
Building a greener, smarter future
San Leandro's Gate510 campus has quickly become a hub for companies shaping the future of multiple industries. Air Protein, Coreshell and Lyten are among the innovators leveraging the infrastructure and support for makers in San Leandro. Read on to discover how they're redefining what's possible. AIR PROTEIN NASA-inspired research drives sustainable food production A food production facility that once made such American breakfast innovations as Eggo Waffles and Pop-Tarts is aiming to change the way we eat once again, this time with a sustainable twist. Air Protein opened its first Air Protein Farm on San Leandro's Gate510 campus in 2023, where it does just what its name suggests: make high-quality protein out of particles in the air. Co-founders Lisa Dyson and John Reed were inspired by research from the early days of NASA, which explored ways astronauts could produce food on long space journeys. They built on that work, creating a method for growing protein in cultures, similar to the production of yogurt, cheese, and wine. The result is a neutral-tasting protein flour that can be turned into or used in any food. 'We and our investors believe we've cracked the code on making functional ingredients that have a great cost profile,' Dyson said. 'Many companies are also looking for ingredients that are resource-efficient, and that's what we do. We help CPG [Consumer Packaged Goods] companies make great products for consumers.' In choosing San Leandro, Air Protein put the company's headquarters in a location with a history of food manufacturing. Dyson said the Air Protein project team and the landlord worked closely with the City throughout the process to obtain the necessary permits for building out the facility. 'With this particular site and location, there is fermentation happening with other companies around us,' Dyson said. These include 21st Amendment Brewery and Drake's Brewing. 'That made this more appealing than some other options.' The San Leandro Air Protein Farm produces samples of its protein in large enough quantities for food product companies to use in their product development. Next up will be a larger commercial facility to support full-scale use of Air Protein in food for grocery shelves. 'That's the most exciting thing about 2025,' Dyson said. 'We're turning the science innovation that NASA started in the 1960s and 1970s, completing the mission and making it a reality.' LYTEN San Leandro lands new battery cell production facility Every once in a while, an opportunity comes along that is just too good to pass up. That's what happened to Lyten, a San Jose-based company specializing in supermaterial applications, which focuses on commercializing lithium-sulfur batteries as a high-performance, low-cost alternative to lithium-ion technology. The company was in the process of planning a gigafactory in Nevada and thinking about its next major production facility outside California when the perfect location popped up in San Leandro, said Chief Battery Technology Officer Celina Mikolajczak. A lithium-metal battery maker had closed, leaving behind a manufacturing space and equipment that was immediately of interest. Lyten snapped up the equipment and 119,000-square-foot lease at Gate510 that November. Mikolajczak expects to have a 100-megawatt-hour production line in San Leandro up and running in 2026. 'We were planning and tooling for a big factory, and then the opportunity to take over the lease in San Leandro occurred,' she said. 'We said, 'Wow, that's a big enough space. There's enough dry room capability there. There's enough power. We could get one high-volume production line running there and learn a hell of a lot and get a jump on being ready for a bigger factory.' Lyten's San Leandro site will deliver lithium-sulfur battery cells for multiple types of energy storage customers, including defense and drone applications. In doing so, the company will help U.S. manufacturers keep more of their supply chain close to home. 'With lithium-sulfur, we can develop the technology and commercialize it in the U.S. and be part of creating the next wave of manufacturing in this country,' Mikolajczak said. CORESHELL New battery anodes boost domestic supply chain Batteries have quickly become a crucial component in efforts to transition from fossil fuels to sustainable forms of energy. But the batteries most widely used in electric vehicles and other key applications today come with limitations. San Leandro-based Coreshell is one of the innovators working to change this. The company has developed a battery anode that uses 100% domestically sourced metallurgical silicon instead of graphite, allowing it to store significantly more energy without relying on a risky supply chain. 'We're replacing something that is produced only in China with silicon that is produced widely here in the United States and in Europe,' said Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Tan. 'It can be even more cost-effective.' Founded in 2017, Coreshell relocated its development work to the Gate510 campus in 2020 and opted to remain in the city when it was time to expand into the first stages of production in 2024. It moved across the street to another building on the Gate510 campus, where a team of approximately 50 people has a four megawatt-hour pilot production facility that produces its first battery cells ready for commercialization in electric vehicles. 'We're proposing a foundational change in battery chemistry by replacing graphite — one of the largest single materials in a battery — with silicon,' Tan said. 'It is imperative that we show the market how that will help people power their daily lives.' San Leandro was ideal because it offered a combination of the necessary infrastructure — including access to the heavy power Coreshell needs for manufacturing — and efficient permitting and other City support, Tan said. A San Leandro headquarters also gives Coreshell access to a strong talent pipeline from throughout the Bay Area's growing battery expertise. San Leandro Mayor Juan Gonzalez, and members of the City staff visited with Coreshell this spring. It was an opportunity for Tan and his team to share more about their work and talk about how the City can support the company's future growth. 'To have a receptive audience with the Mayor, the City Manager's office and others in San Leandro, it shows that they are invested in helping companies like Coreshell grow and be successful,' Tan said. 'We value that partnership and how they are actively working to find ways to support the success and growth of companies like ours.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Low volatility, US dollar, tech 'super boom': Market Takeaways
Yahoo Finance Markets and Data Editor Jared Blikre joins Asking for a Trend with Josh Lipton to take a look at the biggest takeaways from Friday's trading session: the trend of low volatility, the US dollar ( driving markets more than crypto or commodities, and the tech sector "super boom." To hear more about the tech super boom, watch Jared's full Stocks in Translation interview with Stock Trader's Almanac editor in chief Jeffrey Hirsch here. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Asking for a Trend here. in this bull market, we are seeing a lot of low volatility days, and that's what we're seeing right here, melt up. And I will show you the week's action in the S&P 500 just to reiterate what we saw after the closing bell. And by the way, let's just start with the sector action. All 11 sectors for these five days in the green. Interestingly, healthcare led. You don't see that very often, at least not lately. Then materials, industrials, real estate, financials, so an interesting mix, mostly cyclicals in there, but also the one defensive, which is healthcare. Tech the laggard. And you got to think what's going to happen next week once we have all those big tech earnings, but uh, we'll leave that for next week. And let's just check out the S&P 500 over these five days, and there are fresh records every single day, up 1.5%, and I was sitting down with Jeff Hirsch of the Stock Traders Almanac. We're going to listen to him in a couple of minutes here, but I just wanted to add, when we have a low volatility period, and it's been almost 20 days now, when you get a break to the upside out of that, you usually see more upside. So, but if you get a break to the downside, well, you usually get more downside. So, whenever we break this low volatility spread, that's going to be top of mind for me, and it's probably going to take you, uh, it's going to be an indication of where the next part of the rally or the decline goes. What has been the big driver of the markets outside of stocks? It has been the dollar over the last 24 hours or so, and this was really interesting because I was watching that press conference, it wasn't really a press conference. President Trump was walking around the Fed building with Chair Powell, and there's a little bit of drama there, but the dollar was heading higher after that. And that's just based on some of the headlines that came out of the meeting that Trump is not going to replace Powell, at least for the time being. And so we saw this, it kind of melted up overnight, and the net result is over the last two days it was up about 33 basis points. Doesn't seem like a lot, but in currency terms, it's not nothing. And I'm not ascribing all of the downside in commodities and crypto to it. And let me just put the futures board on there, but I think it was, uh, it was definitely a factor. And so here's our commodities board, more red than green, looks like softs leading the way down, OJ and also coffee down the most, but also silver, palladium, and then sugar. And then looking at crypto, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but Bitcoin kind of slid down below some support. Let me put the year to date on this so I can chart this for you. Here we go. So we did have a little bit of a range here, a break of the range, but in the big picture, you're to date, just barely looks like a blip on your screen there. We keep hearing, Jared, of a skinny bull, a skinny bull with low breath. What do we mean by that? Well, let's take a look at the tech super boom and, or think about it. And here's where I want to call out that Jeffrey Hirsch clip that we have prepared, sat down with us on Stocks and Translation. He's, of course, the editor of the Stock Traders Almanac, so he's very much into seasonality, but separately, he also tracks some of these super cycles, and these are multi-year cycles, sometimes multi-decadal cycles that we see in some different markets, especially tech-driven. Let's take a listen. This is all part of our longer-term outlook of what we call the super boom, um, which is based upon, uh, you know, inflation and in the end of more like peace time, and also, uh, technology. Culturally, what I call a culturally enabling paradigm shifting technology. This is something that Yale discovered back in the '70s where we see these moves after these postwar periods of 500% or more. Um, we came out with this in 2010, this forecast for Dow 38,820 when it was about 10,000. All right, so getting, getting back to your question, what is, what's with this skinny bull market? It's true. We've had less than half of the S&P 500 stocks really participating year-to-date. You're not seeing, uh, you're not seeing these wild, uh, bullishly internal stats like 70% above their 200-day moving average. And then you take a look at the smaller caps, and here's what I have on the screen here. I'm comparing the MAG 7 to the IWM, which is Russell 2000 ETF since the election. So basically since November 5th. And the Russell 2000 here is break even. Uh, it's barely been able to hold its water here. And of course, there's a big decline and it declined more than MAG 7, but here's the MAG 7, they're only back up to their highs. And even the MAG 7 are kind of struggling it seems to carry the market. The MAG 7 have really become Nvidia and Microsoft. Those have been the biggest two drivers. And I want to show you something else here, and I'm going to wrap this all up after a few more charts. Here's Ark Innovation Fund versus IShares Russell 2000 ETF. And you can see it has just rocketed past these old highs here. And so, and then here's Bitcoin versus small caps. And this is up even more, 68% versus a break even. So where is the strength coming from? You're not seeing it in the middle of the market. You're seeing it from some of the big players and then a bunch of fringey places like innovation, like disruption, like crypto and all these other smaller place. And we also meme stocks. I mean, we just did an entire segment or you just did an entire segment on it. That's where we're seeing the money flow. So you put it all together, there's a vast swath of stocks that are not participating here, but things look good if you're in the right places or if you're just in the major indices and you don't mind watching things go up just a little bit every day. Finally, what's on the Jared Blikre radar for next week? You know, I am interested in some of these big tech earnings. I do want to see what happens with Apple. I'm not counting Apple out by any means. Some of the others as well, but I also want to focus on the dollar. I'm going to see if it continues its ascent because Monday morning, I'm going to do, I'm going to show, I'm going to do August seasonality and we can talk about this too. Dollar typically rises at this point in the year, so that could be a contrary trade. And then meme stocks and all this fringey stuff I've been talking about. That's what I'm going to watch. A lot on deck. Thank you, buddy. Appreciate it. Later.
