The pace of innovation in smartphones has far exceeded our imaginations. Major domestic brands not only introduce new models annually but also, with the rapid development of AI technology, have launched a new generation of AI-enabled phones and systems. These advancements provide consumers with a more personalized user experience. According to Canalys’ report, in the first quarter of 2024, the shipment of AI phones in China has already surpassed one million units, accounting for 25% of the global AI phone shipments.
The advent of AI phones has also heralded a new era for smartphones in China. Analysts predict that by 2028, the global market share of AI phones will reach 50%. Many mobile phone brands have seized this market growth opportunity, expanding into Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Europe, creating new business opportunities.
However, the domestic and international deployment of AI phones also faces challenges. Whether it’s the speed of system updates and downloads for end-users locally or the performance of AI-enabled software in target overseas countries, the degree of “high usability” will greatly affect the user experience.
Therefore, Mlytics has planned a “Global High-Performance CDN and API Solution” to address the challenges of operating system (OS) updates for major domestic brands when their phones go global. This solution aids Chinese mobile brands in enhancing their connectivity performance overseas, accelerating the pace of system iteration and updates, and improving the experience for end-users.
From China to the World: Global Challenges and Opportunities in Mobile Firmware Downloads
Let’s take a look at the story of Chinese smartphones expanding to the Indian market. Starting from 2022, to align with the Indian government’s 5G network development policies, Chinese mobile brands have begun rolling out new firmware updates in several cutting-edge cities in India, allowing Indian users to enjoy better mobile and network experiences. This is a prime example of how innovations in network infrastructure can directly benefit firmware updates for users to enjoy an upgraded smartphone experience.
However, the firmware file sizes typically range from 5GB to 10GB. The time for an update can vary from 15 to 20 minutes on the faster side to half an hour or more on the slower side, depending not only on local network infrastructure but also on the adequacy of bandwidth during download.
But if we delve deeper into this issue, we discover that the challenge of slow download speeds for large firmware files goes beyond the sophistication of network infrastructure and is more closely related to the following three challenges:
- Source Server Overload: Providing large files directly from the source can lead to increased server load, potential bottlenecks, and even downtime during peak demand periods. For Indian mobile end-users, this means that during peak times, such as new game releases or firmware updates, download speeds may significantly decrease, affecting the user experience.
- Peak Traffic Management: Managing high-concurrency downloads during events like firmware updates is crucial for maintaining seamless performance. Indian users may encounter slow download speeds or service unavailability during these peak times. Additionally, during peak traffic periods, the long duration of firmware updates is prone to interruptions or errors, leading to a poor user experience.
- Lack of Proactive Caching Strategies: Without them, high download failure rates may occur during peak events due to server overload or network congestion. For Indian users, this could lead to failed firmware updates, affecting the normal use of devices.
With Xiaomi’s announcement earlier this year that its self-developed HyperOS will cover 30 million devices in the European market, and with over 35 million Xiaomi phones shipping to India in the third quarter of this year also featuring the same firmware system, it is evident that the sales of Chinese mobile phones in overseas market are gradually increasing. Moreover, the speed of overseas firmware downloads will become an essential aspect of the user experience.
What are the Impacts of Low Firmware Download Speeds?
The speed of updates has a profound impact on the mobile phone’s branding. We have observed from “Reddit” that many netizens are discussing about issues such as “domestic mobile OS failing to update overseas” or “incomplete firmware updates.” To thoroughly address past download issues and anticipate the dramatic increase in shipments of AI phones in the future, which will make OS updates more frequent, how can we minimize the impact of the aforementioned challenges on users?
In the traditional scenario of mobile firmware downloads, when mobile phone brands collaborate with other CDN experts, they usually provide solutions such as “segmented transmission” or “optimized transmission protocols” to reduce packet loss or retransmission, enhancing the stability and transfer rate of large file transfers.
However, mobile phone manufacturers consider not only “acceleration” but also security and integrity during the transmission process. Update files may be tampered with or attacked during transmission, potentially threatening the security of user devices. Therefore, considering the cost for the whole process, smartphone manufacturers have to maintain a large-scale server cluster and bandwidth resources for global users, which is quite costly.
Mlytics leverages its existing advantages in technology planning and application, through Digital Asset Management technique and Application Delivery with API-centric platform, not only improving resource utilization and reducing costs but also successfully preventing security threats. But you might also be curious, as content distribution acceleration technology is not new, how does Mlytics use Application Programming Interface (API) tools to achieve a technological breakthrough, helping mobile phone brands to accelerate large file downloads overseas?
Global Synchronization: How Mlytics’s API Technology Fuels Mobile Brands’ International Expansion
Our understanding of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is a set of definitions and protocols used for building and integrating software applications. In addressing the pain points of overseas mobile users in downloading large files, Mlytics deploys two API-centric technologies to reduce frequent complaints from overseas users about unsuccessful file downloads:
Pre-fetching Content to Edge Nodes
Through API technology, content is proactively cached at CDN edge nodes, ensuring that firmware or large files are close to end-users and readily available before release. Serving content from edge nodes reduces the data transfer distance, which not only lowers latency but also minimizes requests to the origin server, alleviating 20% of the load and reducing the risk of overload during peak hours.
Enabling Range Request Retrieval
The range request mechanism allows clients to request a byte range of a file instead of the entire file, enabling mobile brands to reduce bandwidth consumption by only transmitting the required file segments, thereby lowering costs. Moreover, Mlytics’s API supports resumable downloads with download recovery capabilities, enhancing the user experience in the event of network interruptions.
Therefore, in solving the pain points of overseas mobile users in downloading large files, Mlytics uses API technology to meet the high availability and performance demands of global content distribution, ensuring a stable download experience for users worldwide at a lower operational cost, and controlling expenses during peak traffic periods. This not only aids new smartphone sales in overseas markets for mobile brands but also directly satisfies the download speed demands of mobile users.
Chinese mobile phones going global began in 2010. As they move into the second decade now, many mobile brands have been upgraded. “The best globalization is deep cultivation,” By leveraging integrated CDN technology and API-based active caching, Chinese mobile brands successfully reduce the pressure of large file downloads and enhance the recovery capabilities in the event of download interruptions.
With Mlytics’s API-centric platform and technique, Chinese mobile brands’ localization strategies for entering the global market can provide smartphone users with an excellent experience and create a greater business value.
