Chinese smartphone maker Oppo in weekly AI talks with Google, Microsoft

BEIJING — Chinese smartphone company Oppo is doubling down on artificial intelligence as it holds weekly talks about AI with senior management at Google and Microsoft in the run-up to the launch of its flagship phone overseas.

The collaborations are part of the race to build the next artificial intelligence application. The rise of generative AI — tech that can produce human-like responses when prompted — has companies from Apple to Honeywell rushing to tap its capabilities.

“Google will also come to China to ask us, what needs and pain points do you have with your products? Let’s solve them together,” Billy Zhang, president of Oppo’s overseas market, sales and services, told reporters last week at the company’s office in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. That’s according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.

“We know consumers’ needs, and we will use AI to satisfy [them],” Zhang said. The company is expanding further in Europe, but does not have immediate plans for the U.S., he said.

Oppo, which owns the OnePlus brand too, said around 60% of its shipments come from Southeast Asia, Europe and other overseas markets. The company ranked fourth globally in terms of smartphone shipments in the third quarter, making up 9% of all units shipped, according to Canalys. Samsung and Apple were tied for the first spot, followed by Xiaomi.

While the U.S. leads in terms of AI capabilities, experts suggest Chinese companies will have an edge when it comes to consumer applications of the tech. That’s despite U.S. restrictions on exports of high-end chips to China.

Oppo has said the global version of its forthcoming flagship smartphone will be equipped with AI writing and recording summary tools from Google’s Gemini, and text-to-speech features from Microsoft. Microsoft employs OpenAI products such as ChatGPT.

It was not immediately clear to what extent existing Oppo models use AI tools from the two tech companies. Oppo announced Thursday its new flagship Find X8 series is “coming soon” to global markets. But the company has yet to specify when.

Oppo in June announced it plans to integrate generative AI in 50 million of its devices this year. Its existing AI tools allow touching up photos — such as removing window reflections. Oppo also has a ChatGPT-like bot.

In addition to partnerships, Oppo said it has developed its own AI models since 2020 and opened an AI center in February.

“We are very optimistic about AI and have invested with great determination,” Zhang said. “AI is the most important area for tech in the future. All industries can be transformed by AI.”

Counterpoint Research predicts shipments of generative AI smartphones will skyrocket to 732 million in 2028 from 46 million last year, according to a whitepaper published Wednesday. The report did not specify how…