On March 18th, Qualcomm officially released the third-generation Snapdragon 8s mobile platform. As a new member of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 series, the third-generation Snapdragon 8s also has the positioning of a flagship platform. However, in terms of comprehensive performance, it falls between the second-generation Snapdragon 8 and the third-generation Snapdragon 8. Therefore, the third-generation Snapdragon 8s will be a supplement to Qualcomm's existing products, helping it expand into more smartphone markets.
According to Chris Patrick, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mobile Business at Qualcomm, powerful terminal side generative AI functionality is a major feature of the third-generation Snapdragon 8s. Chris Patrick said, "The third-generation Snapdragon 8s supports a wide range of AI models, including mainstream big language models such as Baichuan-7B, Gemini Nano, Llama 2, and Zhipu ChatGLM."
This year, "AI phones" have become the focus of attention in the smartphone industry. According to CounterPoint statistics, global smartphone shipments were on an upward trend before 2017, with sales reaching a peak of 1.566 billion units in 2017. Subsequently, they entered a downward trend, and it is expected that sales for the entire year of 2023 will decrease by 5.31% year-on-year to 1.16 billion units.
Guolian Securities wrote in a research report that with the release of multiple new AI phone models and the improvement of user experience brought by AI, smartphone sales are expected to return to the upward cycle.
Guolian Securities said that from the perspective of smartphone LTM sales (in the past 12 months), the market in Chinese Mainland reached 529 million units in February 2017 at the highest level, and then fell all the way down to 264 million units in December 2022, and then fluctuated around 260 million units in a narrow range for 12 months. It has returned to 287 million units in January 2024.
IDC predicts that the global shipment of next-generation AI smartphones will reach 170 million units in 2024, accounting for approximately 15% of the overall smartphone shipment. In the Chinese market, with the rapid iteration of new chips and user usage scenarios, the market share of the new generation of AI smartphones will rapidly increase after 2024, reaching 150 million units in 2027, with a market share of over 50%.
It can be seen that the AI big model that swept the world last year is triggering a revolution in the smartphone industry. In October 2023, Qualcomm unveiled the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform at the Snapdragon Summit, claiming to be a flagship chip specifically designed for generative AI.
According to the reporter's understanding, the third-generation Snapdragon 8 supports multimodal generative AI models for the first time on mobile devices. The Qualcomm AI engine has enabled the world's first model to support running 10 billion parameters on terminal devices, and can generate 20 tokens per second for LLM with 7 billion parameters.
After the release of the third-generation Snapdragon 8, it has been adopted by multiple global OEM and smartphone brands such as Xiaomi, Samsung, Asus, Honor, iQOO, Meizu, NIO, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, realme, Redmi, RedMagic, Sony, vivo, etc.
Qualcomm President and CEO Amon previously stated in a media interview that generative AI will revolutionize the user experience on the terminal side. For example, the new generation flagship smartphone Galaxy 24 series released by Samsung in January this year has achieved various AI functions such as instant search, real-time translation of calls, note taking assistant, image assistant, transcription assistant, and writing assistant.
AI phones have become an industry trend, and in addition to flagship phones, a larger proportion of mid to low-end phones also require the support of AI. The third-generation Snapdragon 8s is expected to enable more such phones to have AI capabilities.
According to Lu Weibing, President of Xiaomi Group, Xiaomi Civi4 Pro will launch the world's third-generation Snapdragon 8s. "The Xiaomi Civi4 Pro is codenamed 'Xiao14 Pro' within Xiaomi. At that time, the Xiaomi Civi series will also undergo brand upgrades and be positioned as a trendy flagship phone. In addition, Redmi will soon release a new series of products and will be equipped with the third-generation Snapdragon 8s." said Lu Weibing.
In addition, new products from mobile phone manufacturers such as Honor, iQOO, and Realme will also adopt the third-generation Snapdragon 8s, and related products are expected to be launched in the coming months.