Honor Embraces Open Collaboration on AI with $10 Billion Alpha Plan

As we expected, AI is everywhere at MWC this year, and Honor’s announcements in this area definitely caught my eye.

At its lavish media event on the eve of MWC, recently appointed Honor CEO, James Li, revealed his intention to transform the business into an “AI device ecosystem company”. At first glance, this sounds like just another company jumping on the AI bandwagon, but on closer inspection, Honor’s Alpha Plan carries more gravitas — and the bold financial commitment of $10 billion over the next five years will undoubtedly turn heads.

A cornerstone of the initiative is Google’s involvement. Chinese smartphone-makers such as Honor have had access to some of Google’s Gemini AI-powered features, but the US search giant has tended to keep them at arm’s length. However, things have changed, with Google now collaborating deeply with Honor to offer cutting-edge AI capabilities, most notably centred on agentic AI.

This is an area Honor has previously focused on in China, but it’s now seeking to extend the capabilities to a global audience by offering agentic access to third-party services like OpenTable, and with plans to access a broad spectrum of Google properties including YouTube, Keep, Google Docs, Gmail and more.

Although we’ve seen some of this on Google Pixel devices and Samsung Galaxy products, the move shows Honor’s desire to be among the leading Android smartphone-makers. Aligned to this, it also announced it will support seven years of Android operating system and security updates for its Magic Series devices, becoming the first Chinese manufacturer to commit to this.

Honor also reiterated its close ties with Qualcomm, which offers on-device AI capabilities through its Snapdragon platform, and these are central to the phone-maker’s AI plans. Leading network operators CK Hutchison, Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone also pledged support through in-person appearances by executives at the launch event.

CCS Insight research underlines the importance of AI in the connected devices market. Our current forecast indicates that the proportion of AI-capable smartphones sold worldwide will rise from 37% in 2025 to 73% in 2028, within a global smartphone market of 1.4 billion shipments annually.

Additionally, in our consumer research, over 90% of respondents in leading advanced markets such as the UK, Germany and the US tell us that they know what AI is, and more than four in 10 people say they would pay more for a phone with some AI capabilities.

Although we expect other Chinese phone-makers to have AI as a central theme to their product announcements at MWC, the scale and ambition of Honor’s strategy of “transitioning from a smartphone-maker to a global AI device ecosystem company” is striking.

I’ll certainly be watching developments with interest over the next few months. Honor’s challenge is to now turn this commitment into a meaningful new experience on its range of devices including smartphones, PCs, tablets, wearables and more.

The momentum for AI in smartphones is gathering, and device-makers like Honor must clearly explain to consumers how this will improve the experience. The building blocks have been laid. AI is arguably poised to deliver even more personalized services and intuitive user experiences than we’ve previously seen.