After Foundation Models, Intelligent Agents Take Center Stage as Tech Firms Accelerate Deployment | Live from MWC Shanghai

Following the rise of foundation models, intelligent agents (Agent, 智能体) have become a new focus in the AI sector. Industry views suggest 2025 will mark the breakthrough year for intelligent agents. At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Shanghai, numerous technology firms in sectors such as mobile phones and PCs showcased their strategic layouts for intelligent agents.

Huawei Executive Director Wang Tao stated that the development of mobile AI is advancing faster than anticipated. AI terminal shipments have increased a hundredfold. By the first quarter of this year, cumulative shipments of AI smartphones reached 360 million units, with 70% of newly shipped devices equipped with native AI capabilities. The daily number of generative AI tokens has reached 10 trillion, representing a year-on-year increase of 1,000 times. Among the world’s top 100 applications, 90% have integrated AI generation capabilities, spanning social, entertainment, and education scenarios. Monthly active users of AI applications have surpassed 1.2 billion. Mobile terminals are shifting from app-centered to agent-centered experiences, providing each user with a dedicated intelligent assistant. By 2030, nearly 10 billion personal AI agents are expected globally, reshaping the user interaction landscape.

Honor AI Product Expert Zhang Chong noted that AI is evolving from foundation model technology to real-world applications, with intelligent agents serving as the ideal bridge between the physical and digital realms. Honor has developed a series of terminal-cloud foundation models, including the multimodal MagicVL terminal-side model and the MagicSpeech terminal-side voice model. MCP, currently an industry standard, is expected to accelerate the final mile of intelligent agent deployment. Honor is set to become the first terminal brand to embrace the open MCP protocol. Zhang stated that by 2025, Honor will integrate more than 300 MCP services and 5,000 AI services, expanding to over 2,000 MCP connections and 20,000 AI services by 2026.

Honor is also expanding its AI ecosystem collaborations. At the event, Honor and China Mobile launched a strategic cooperation initiative on AI terminals, aiming to drive innovation in AI terminal products, ecosystem development, and business model implementation. The goal is to jointly create an open and innovative AI terminal ecosystem and explore intelligent terminal products that understand users, think independently, and take action. This collaboration aims to further enhance the synergy of intelligent agents across multiple terminals and systems.

Lenovo Group debuted several products at MWC Shanghai 2025, including the Tianxi Personal Super Intelligent Agent, Lenovo Lexiang Enterprise Super Intelligent Agent, and City Super Intelligent Agent. The Tianxi agent has been fully integrated into Lenovo’s AI PCs, offering five major functions: AI control, AI search, AI translation, AI notes, and AI services.

Liu Jun, Executive Vice President of Lenovo Group and President of Lenovo China, remarked that the current wave driven by AI represents the fourth industrial revolution. A new version of Moore's Law is emerging, and society is entering a new era of co-creation between humans and intelligence. For the 2025 fiscal year, Lenovo China aims to use AI to replace one-quarter of its level-four processes.

Kewei Storage, a STAR Market-listed company, also participated in MWC 2025. Its storage products have been deployed in AI smartphones, AI PCs, AI education, and embodied intelligence. The company has entered the supply chains of leading PC manufacturers and international clients such as Google and Meta in the smart wearables sector.

Despite rapid development, challenges remain in AI implementation. Honor CEO Li Jian stated that scenarios, performance, and trust have not yet formed a closed loop. Limited computing power and memory on terminal devices hinder support for models above 7B and complex reasoning needs. Issues such as hallucinations, privacy, and forum-based trust also persist, and standards for data rights and value have not been unified. Li emphasized that future AI competition will not center on model size or capability but on practical usability in everyday life.

Moreover, the effective deployment of AI agents and foundation models relies on robust mobile networks. Wireless network evolution must keep pace with the advancement of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).

During MWC Shanghai, China Telecom and Huawei jointly released a new technological development: “Intelligent uplink technology based on orchestration, uplink spectrum decoupling, and pooling,” aiming to advance 5G-A networks as foundational infrastructure for mobile AI. The technology leverages multi-antenna uplink coverage and distributed UCN (User-Centric Network), enabling real-time sharing of time-frequency-space resources. By incorporating wireless intelligent technology, it builds a wireless AI service network to support applications such as smart wearables, connected vehicles, and real-time AI assistant interactions.