PARTNER CONTENT: China Mobile upgraded its Cloud Phone with the addition of a cloud OS AI agent, which it claims is the world’s first cloud phone product with integrated AI functions to deliver a more personalized experience.
The world’s largest mobile operator by subscribers first launched the Cloud Phone in 2023 to mark World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, with the aim of making the service a landmark app in the 5G era. It offers a groundbreaking take on personal computing, using the processing power of the cloud instead of running processing on the on-board CPU.
As a virtual mobile phone running in the cloud, Cloud Phone moves computing, storage and rendering to the cloud, bringing customers powerful computing power services that support 2K image quality, terabyte storage and cross-terminal interaction.
By connecting to the cloud server through a network, a cloud phone gives a basic, low-cost handset the same advanced communication functions as a physical flagship smartphone.
Leverage network assets
The operator said Cloud Phone is the first computing service for mobile users to achieve large-scale commercial use, leveraging the advantages of 5G networks and the public cloud to bring computing power and AI capabilities to users. The company noted the service was developed to take advantage of its nationwide computing network infrastructure.
By setting up proprietary differentiated network guarantee schemes and distributed cloud resource pool automated scheduling technology, it achieved a network latency of less than 20 ms and a typical end-to-end latency of less than 150 ms.
The service saw rapid growth from the start and was aided by China Mobile’s commercialization of 5G-Advanced networks earlier this year. The number of Cloud Phone users exceeded more than 30 million at the end of October.
The Cloud Phone, jointed developed by China Mobile and Huawei over a two-year period, was awarded the 2023 Compute-enabled Innovative Application by China People’s Posts and Telecommunications News.
Tests show downlink throughput of 10 Mb/s to 20 Mb/s is required. When users make a video call or live stream, an average uplink speed of 2 Mb/s to 4 Mb/s is also needed. Current 5G networks can satisfy both the downlink and uplink requirements of the service.
Revenue impact
Some 45 per cent of Cloud Phone users are high-end GoTone subscribers, much higher than the proportion of the entire user base. The average monthly traffic of core Cloud Phone users is 34.39 GB, more than double (122%) the network-wide average.
China Mobile noted the service also is attracting customers from rivals; among core users of Cloud Phone, China Telecom and China Unicom users account for 27 per cent.
Cloud Phones can be combined with China Mobile’s super SIM, 5G new calling, multimedia content and 5G-Advanced networks with service guarantees to create exclusive, customized services based on user preferences.
After being launched in April 2024, China Mobile Zhejiang’s “Cloud T-Card” gained over 200,000 users in four months, offering users 1 TB complimentary data allowance, 1 TB cloud storage, and membership privileges including access to live streaming of major sports and music events and gaming in addition to calls and internet access. Notably, for power saving, cloud processing frees smartphones from heavy CPU consumption and rendering, and the battery is used only for audio/video streaming, reducing power consumption by 70 per cent while gaming, and eliminating overheating risks.
This is also expected to boost sales of 5G traffic and new 5G data plans by the high-value cloud phone users. By bundling with SIM card sales, cloud phones have significantly enhanced data sales, computing power, and premium contents, as discovered by China Mobile, leading to the increased Cloud T card sales. To date, over 800,000 Cloud T cards have been activated in Zhejiang and other provinces.
China Mobile provides three tiers of Cloud Phones: standard, professional and premium. It plans to sell Cloud Phone computing services supporting higher performance (CPU/GPU/storage) and customized service on demand for enterprises.
In the future, the company aims to generate revenue from app pre-installation and advertisement distribution on the cloud OS, implementing ecosystem service expansion similar to OTT services.
Integration
Cloud Phones provide universal computing services for the general public in the form of internet-based products, such as apps and HTML5 pages, facilitating deployment and access.
The cloud platform is deployed on the public cloud and can run on an enterprise private cloud for improved data security in certain business scenarios by providing users with nearby access.
Cloud Phone meets the needs of different user groups for ultra-high computing power, large storage, ultra-high security and AI capabilities. For example, in terms of basic functions, users can flexibly configure computing power, storage and traffic packages, and define their own game cloud phone, video cloud phone and office cloud phone to deliver different personalized experiences.
For added convenience, Cloud Phone has installed commonly used apps based on a customer’s usage patterns, enabling multi-identity management and flexible switching to office, social and other modes.
Cloud Phones are real-time interactive services and therefore are network sensitive. Data burst can cause networks congested, reduce responsiveness and cause packet loss. The service is differentiated by using an independent high-priority 5G QoS identifier. When the 5G network is congested, the Cloud Phone service data packets can be preferentially scheduled to reduce data transmission delay and improve user experience.
All Android and Harmony OS phones in the market support the Cloud Phone app download, while iOS phones can use the HTML5 webpage to adopt the service. 5G-enabled handsets can enable higher-definition and lower-latency experience with 5G networks.