On-device Artificial Intelligence will continue to be a focus area for Huawei

After posting robust growth in its smartphone and wearables shipments in the first half of this year, a top executive of Chinese tech conglomerate **Huawei**  has said the company would focus on on-device **Artificial Intelligence** (AI) capabilities and Cloud ecosystem to drive its consumer business growth. Revealing the results for the first half of 2018, the company said it shipped over 95 million units of smartphones globally. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), Huawei delivered smartphones shipments of 54.2 million units in the second quarter of this year which helped it become the second-largest smartphone brand worldwide in the same quarter. [caption id=“attachment_4774731” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”]  Representative Image.[/caption] While Samsung maintained the lead with shipments of 71.5 million units, Apple came third with its shipments of 41.3 million iPhones in Q2 2018, according to the IDC report. Huawei said its success on smartphones shipments in the first half of 2018 was backed by strong sales in the Mate 10 series, P20 series and the Nova series. “The past six months have been incredible for Huawei CBG (Consumer Business Group), marked by robust growth of our business across all markets and product lines,” Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei CBG said in a statement. “Our success is owed to our commitment to innovation and, most importantly, our customers. Moving forward, Huawei will remain focused on continually improving our offerings with an emphasis on on-device AI, Cloud and the wider Huawei ecosystem,” Yu said. Huawei,which operates over 53,000 Huawei stores and 3,500 Huawei “Experience” stores globally, said its wearables segment achieved a 147 per cent increase year-over-year.