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Chinese smartphone company Honor has released devices that fold up to be nearly as thin as an iPhone.

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BARCELONA — Honor on Sunday pledged $10 billion in artificial intelligence investments over the next five years and announced a deepening partnership with Google, as the Chinese smartphone maker looks to bolster its market share overseas.

The investment plan, revealed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, is designed to reposition the firm from a smartphone player into an “AI device ecosystem company,” according to Honor.

The Chinese company is somewhat of an upstart in the smartphone world, after spinning off from Huawei in 2020 when the tech giant was hit with U.S. sanctions. Since then, Honor has looked to expand outside of China and push into the higher-end part of the market where Apple and Samsung play.

The company has made some headway by releasing some innovative devices, including foldable phones, but it still remains a small player globally. Its smartphone market share outside of China stood at 2.3% in 2024 versus 1.7% in 2023, according to IDC data.

An Honor spokesperson told CNBC the money would go toward putting AI into hardware as well as next generation AI agents, which are often described as more advanced virtual assistants.

Another part of the investment will go toward creating a “platform for a wide range of AI devices.”

“This is not limited to our own devices, but also AI devices from different partners, so the different kinds of AI devices can talk to each other, and consumers can have more choices and seamless experiences,” the Honor spokesperson said.

A small portion of the investment will also be used to “prepare for the AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) era.”

AGI generally refers to AI that is smarter than humans.

Closer Google ties

On Sunday, Honor demonstrated a proof of concept “AI agent”. One example involved a user asking the agent to book a restaurant with specific requirements, such as the type of preferred cuisine and the distance from the user. The agent went ahead and made a reservation. Honor said it is working with Google and chip designer Qualcomm on developing its AI agent, but did not give a timeline for its release.

Meanwhile, Honor is also using the technology behind Google Gemini, the U.S. firm’s AI system, for the AI features on its latest devices.

Meanwhile on Sunday, Honor announced that it would commit to seven years of employing the Android operating system and security updates for its Magic series of flagship smartphones — becoming just one of very few vendors to pledge this. Google’s own Pixel devices and Samsung’s S series of flagship smartphones are the only other devices to offer similar support.

Android is the operating system created by Google. While the seven year support is not directly related to Google, it highlights Honor’s commitment to the operating system.

While there are many Android smartphone players, not all of them have as close a tie to Google as do Samsung, the biggest Android user in the world, and Xiaomi, the second largest. Honor is now joining that list.

“Honor’s deeper partnership with Google is very significant,” Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, told CNBC. “To date, it has felt as though Google was keeping Chinese smartphone makers at arm’s length when it came to the most advanced aspects of Gemini AI, but this appears to put the Honor on par with Samsung Galaxy and Google’s own Pixel products which is quite a coup.”

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Chinese EV startup Xpeng delivers over 30,000 cars for a fourth straight month

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Chinese EV startup Xpeng delivers over 30,000 cars for a fourth straight month

The flagship store of Xiaopeng Motors in Shanghai, China, on Feb. 18, 2025.

CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Chinese electric car company Xpeng delivered more than 30,000 cars for a fourth-straight month in February, as its mass-market brand helped the company stand out in an otherwise tepid market.

Xpeng delivered 30,453 cars last month, including more than 15,000 units of its lower-priced Mona vehicle, the company said over the weekend.

Deliveries of the Mona M03, which include a basic driver-assist system, have topped 15,000 a month since December, according to company figures. Xpeng also said strong demand for driver-assist propelled deliveries of its P7+ electric sedan to more than 30,000 less than three months since its launch in November.

Looking ahead, Xpeng’s planned new vehicles also give the company “a good chance to extend its solid delivery momentum,” Nomura analysts said in a Sunday note.

The January to February period tends to be seasonally soft for Chinese car sales since it coincides with the week-long Lunar New Year, the country’s biggest holiday of the year. The local auto market remains highly competitive as traditional automakers and new entrants have rushed to cut prices and launch vehicles with new tech features.

China's EV overcapacity is a bigger issue for Japanese automakers than Korean ones

Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi delivered more than 20,000 electric cars for a fifth straight month in February. The company last week slashed the starting price of its luxury electric sedan, the SU7 Ultra, to 529,900 yuan ($72,750), down from 814,900 yuan ($111,878).

The SU7’s “new order situation is even better than actual sales,“ Nomura analysts said, citing its own industry survey. That means the only challenge for Xiaomi is its ability to produce enough cars, the analysts said.

Figures on Tesla‘s China deliveries are typically released around the middle of the month.

Industry giant BYD reported 318,233 new energy vehicle passenger car sales in February, up slightly from the prior month. The company last month announced it was rolling out driver-assist across a range of its cars and integrating artificial intelligence from DeepSeek.

Geely-owned Zeekr delivered 14,039 units in February, up from the 11,942 delivered the previous month, according to company figures.

EV brands that struggled in February

However, deliveries of several other major Chinese electric car brands declined over that time.

Li Auto deliveries fell to 26,263 units last month, from 29,927 in January, according to the company. Its premium-priced vehicles have been popular with Chinese consumers since they come with a fuel tank for extending the battery’s driving range. Last month, Li Auto revealed the exterior design of its first fully battery-electric SUV.

Nio deliveries dropped to 13,192 units in February, down from 13,863 the month before. The company announced a five-year, 0% interest plan on Feb. 1 in a bid to boost sales.

Aito, the Seres-owned brand that uses Huawei technology, reported its lowest deliveries in a year, at 21,517 units in February, according to CNBC analysis of publicly available figures.

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Lenovo teases solar-powered and foldable screen laptops in latest concept

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Lenovo teases solar-powered and foldable screen laptops in latest concept

The Lenovo ThinkBook ‘flip’ concept. The screen is able to fold once horizontally to create two different screen spaces.

CNBC: Lenovo Flip PC

Lenovo on Monday showed off a laptop with a foldable screen and one that can get extra battery life from solar power.

These laptops are just concepts, meaning they are not commercially available. Lenovo, the world’s biggest PC maker, has a history of showing off imaginative concepts with some becoming reality, so it’s worth keeping an eye on what the Chinese technology giant is up to.

For example, Lenovo previously showed off the idea of a rollable laptop — one where the screen rolls upwards to increase the size of the display. The company will begin selling such a laptop this year.

The latest concepts were unveiled at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.

Foldable laptop screen

The Lenovo ThinkBook ‘flip’ concept is a laptop with a foldable screen. When fully unfolded, the screen is an 18-inch display.

The screen can then be folded in half horizontally to create two screens — one on the front and one on the back.

The entire display can be folded down flat so the laptop turns into a tablet-like device.

The Lenovo ThinkBook ‘flip’ concept unfolds into an 18-inch display.

Arjun Kharpal | CNBC

Foldable displays are not new. Consumer electronics players like Samsung and Honor have launched smartphones with foldable displays. Huawei even sells a smartphone with a trifold screen.

But foldable screens of this size and on laptops are uncommon.

There’s plenty more work Lenovo will likely need to do before this can be commercialized including improving the durability of the display.

Solar powered laptop

The Lenovo Yoga Solar PC is another concept device shown off at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2025. It has solar panels on the pack which Lenovo says can give the user extra battery life.

Arjun Kharpal | CNBC

The Lenovo Yoga Solar PC is the company’s other concept device named after its line of Yoga laptops.

The product has solar panels on the back. These are able to absorb light.

While the PC still works with a traditional charger, the idea is that the solar power can give the user an extra bit of battery when the device is running low and there may not be access to a charging point.

Lenovo said that the solar panels can absorb even ambient light in a person’s surroundings to give a user an extra hour of laptop use at the end of an eight-hour work day.

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Xiaomi to sell EVs globally ‘within the next few years’ after launching $73,000 premium car

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Xiaomi to sell EVs globally 'within the next few years' after launching ,000 premium car

The Xiaomi SU7 Ultra on display at the Xiaomi store in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, Feb 27, 2025. Xiaomi’s first luxury model, the SU7 Ultra, will be officially launched on the evening of February 27. 

Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images

BARCELONA — Xiaomi plans to begin selling its electric vehicles outside of China “within the next few years,” company President William Lu said on Sunday.

Lu made the announcement at Xiaomi’s product launch at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While there were no concrete timelines, his comments underscore the Chinese technology giant’s ambitions in the global EV market to take on players like Tesla.

“I cannot share too many details but I am so excited to tell our global users that Xiaomi will be releasing EVs for the sale in global markets within the next few years,” Lu said.

This week, Xiaomi launched its first premium EV in China called the SU7 Ultra, which starts at 529,000 Chinese yuan ($72,627). Lu said the car racked up 15,000 orders in 24 hours and will be on display at the company’s booth at MWC.

It’s only Xiaomi’s second electric car after its announcing its foray into the EV segment in 2021. The company’s first vehicle, called the SU7, was launched last year in March. The company, which is best-known as a smartphone player, only sells its EVs in China but it is the world’s third-largest smartphone vendor.

Xiaomi’s SU7 has been successful, with the company delivering more than 100,000 units last year.

Xiaomi’s EV boom, along with a recovery in smartphone sales, has helped the company’s stock, which is listed in Hong Kong, surge almost 300% over the last 12 months.

The Beijing-headquartered company is looking to ride that wave with a new high-end phone called the Xiaomi 15 Ultra launched on Sunday, which it hopes will challenge Samsung on a global stage.

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