Author: Zhou Yuan/Wall Street News

On March 25, at the Boao Asia Forum 2025 annual meeting, vivo's executive vice **** Baishan officially announced the establishment of the "vivo Robot Lab" (laboratory), officially entering the field of robotics.

According to the plan disclosed by vivo, within the next three years, vivo will launch its first robot product focused on home scenarios, while simultaneously deepening its layout in cutting-edge technologies such as 6G, AI, and Mixed Reality (MR).

This move signifies that the consumer electronics giant is making a strategic leap from smart phones as "mobile terminals" to "home smart hubs."

Behind this decision is the deep resonance of vivo's technological accumulation, social development needs, and policy orientation.

"vivo will focus on the technological research and development direction of the robot 'brain' and 'eyes' driven by AI and imaging technologies," said Hu Baishan. "This is an inevitable extension of vivo's thirty years of technological accumulation and a strategic choice to address the urgent needs of an aging society."

Strategic adaptation: Genetic similarity

Vivo chooses Siasun Robot&Automation over the previously popular Autos, based on the long-standing "dedication" culture of Vivo.

The core of this culture is not to follow trends: when expanding into a new Industry, consider the compatibility between one's technological advantages and the creation of user value.

"When we look at an Industry or a new track, we do not consider if it’s trendy, nor do we look purely at market size, but rather whether it matches our core capabilities and whether we can create value for users," Hu Baishan said. "For Vivo's genes, compared to the Automotive industry, Siasun Robot&Automation is a better choice."

Previously, Hu Baishan emphasized, "The most suitable Industry for doing robots is the Smart Phone industry, and there is no exception."

This is an inherent advantage that cannot be matched by companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics.

Hu Baishan's judgment is based on the high coupling between Smart Phone and robot technology pathways.

First is the migration of the AI brain. Vivo's self-developed blue core model has completed deployment with 7 billion parameters on the edge, and the multi-modal interaction capability can be directly used for robots.

Compared to startups that rely on cloud computing power, vivo's edge AI ensures privacy (in compliance with GDPR standards) and achieves real-time responses within 300ms, providing an excellent experience.

Secondly, vivo's MR (Mixed Reality) spatial modeling, object category, and location recognition technologies, combined with the real-time processing capabilities of its self-developed V3 imaging chip, enable the provision of a "human-like vision" foundation for robots.

Thirdly, the collaborative hardware engineering has a very high reuse rate of technical modules such as mobile optical image stabilization micro motors and vacuum heat dissipation panels, and supply chain management experience can be partially transferred.

These capabilities are reflected at the robotics level, particularly in joint control and heat dissipation.

However, this is not vivo's choice.

Hu Baishan clearly defined the technical and functional boundaries of vivo's involvement in robotics: only making the "brain" and "eyes" of the robots.

Why did vivo choose to make the "brain" and "eyes" of robots?

"These two areas are our strengths. We do not make robotic arms, dexterous hands, or robot bodies; this logic is similar to making smartphones: we do not make SoCs or screens because there are companies in the industry chain that are better at these. We want to cooperate with partners in the industry chain for mutual benefit, as this is how the entire industry can remain healthy and sustainable," said Hu Baishan, "mobile phone manufacturers' accumulation in sensors, computing platforms, and supply chain management can resolve 80% of the robot's 'brain' and 'eyes' issues, with the remaining 20% focusing on mechanical execution capabilities."

The technology accumulated from Smart Phones in the past can be reused for home robots, which is the technical condition for vivo to enter the Robotics Industry; at the same time, Hu Baishan believes that, "robot products must be determined by user scenarios and user needs."

vivo's entry into the Robotics Industry targets the "home-use" scenario.

By focusing on home scenarios, vivo not only avoids competition with industrial robot giants but also addresses the modern family's urgent need for an "intelligent butler" — from household assistance to elderly health monitoring, to emotional companionship, vivo’s layout covers the entire chain of pain points in family life.

The demand for a "full scenario butler" among households in first-tier cities in China is increasing day by day, especially in areas of composite functions such as health monitoring (abnormal alerts for blood pressure/blood sugar), elderly fall alerts, and children's emotional recognition. According to Xinhuanet Co., Ltd., "falls" are the primary cause of injury-related deaths among individuals over 65.

On January 17th this year, according to the introduction at the State Council Information Office press conference, by the end of 2024, the population aged 60 and above in China will reach 310.31 million, breaking through the 0.3 billion mark for the first time, accounting for approximately 21.1% of the total population (this data is sourced from the Ministry of Civil Affairs statistical bulletin).

For the increasingly large aging society, it is not hard to imagine the market demand for health-oriented home robots and the service space formed as a result.

Hu Baishan stated, "Robots will be applied in various fields such as family services, retirement, Medical, and Education, being able to do a good job while also understanding you well. We will focus on the Consumer-grade market, personal and family scene robot products, allowing technology to step out of the laboratory and into the real lives of users, returning to scenarios to solve pain points and iterating products through a 'gradual breakthrough and laying eggs along the way' approach."

Technical path: brain + eyes.

Compared to startups, vivo's entry into the Robotics Industry provides a new model for the competitive landscape of the industry.

vivo has been deeply involved in Smart Phone for many years, and its end-side AI and imaging capabilities have formed a unique technological depth.

In terms of algorithms, the Blue Heart large model achieves end-side deployment, which ensures low latency and high privacy for robot interactions; imaging technology can also be reused, and the self-developed V2 imaging chip's ISP architecture can enhance the visual processing efficiency of robots, while the micro-gimbal technology may improve the stability of robot movements.

In its thirty years of establishment, through the establishment of a joint laboratory with Arm and deep cooperation with Samsung, Sony, etc., vivo has accumulated bargaining power in the fields of Semiconductors and Sensor, which means cost, technology, and application advantages for promoting its home robot business.

As early as 2017, vivo began to layout AI Technology, and training AI Agents with AI technology is one of the important sub-tasks of vivo's Robotics Lab, aiming to construct the brain of vivo's home robots, and this task will be completed by the end-side 'Blue Heart large model'.

Previously, vivo announced plans to launch an MR prototype experience between September and October of this year.

At this year's Boao Forum, vivo first demonstrated the mixed reality headset (i.e., MR prototype). vivo takes this step not only by viewing MR as a new ecological category but also because its technological capabilities have a high reuse value for robots.

"Why do we want to do MR? We actually see MR as the 'eyes' of future robots. For spatial recognition and perception capabilities, robots will need a lot of spatial depth information to interact with the physical world in the future," said Hu Baishan. "The gesture recognition and image recognition capabilities of MR. When I pinch my thumb and index finger, it is a click on the operation interface. This seemingly simple action actually involves a lot of AI learning behind it."

Vivo has made technical preparations and foundational guarantees in three areas:

• An open Blue Heart large model platform allows developers to create home scenario applications based on API, avoiding redundant investment in AI training resources.

• A reusable supply chain, with mobile display screens (JD.com's flexible OLED) and batteries (ATL high-density Cells) modules directly migrated, reducing marginal costs.

• A ready-made end-side ecological system.

Limiting the scope to focus on the research and development of the "brain + eyes" core modules rather than the entire Hardware, Vivo's strategy directly addresses the industry's pain point of "overly high costs" in humanoid robots.

In terms of ecological layout, Vivo is likely to attract developers to join through an open platform, thereby constructing an ecosystem centered around AI Agent, replicating the "Hardware + service" profit model of the mobile phone industry.

Hu Baishan believes that when robots have capabilities for information recognition similar to human eyes and processing and analysis abilities like the human brain, combined with a "body" controlled by the brain, it forms the prototype of a robot.

As for whether the robot has bipedal, quadrupedal, wheeled, or even tracked forms, it is determined by user scenarios. Hu Baishan said that if the mobile phone is compared to two-dimensional, then the robot elevates the mobile phone to three-dimensional or even four-dimensional, and this expansion is extremely smooth.

Ultimate goal: people-oriented.

Vivo's market strategy is not to develop robots in isolation, but to amplify the technological synergy through a closed-loop ecosystem — MR technology empowers robot perception: MR headsets and robots share spatial modeling data to enhance environmental interaction accuracy; robot data feeds back into mobile AI: complex interaction data in home scenarios can quickly optimize the decision-making ability of the Blue Heart large model.

Vivo clearly identifies hospitals and retirement scenarios as key applications for robots, attempting to alleviate the shortage of medical resources through technology. This approach, which emphasizes both commercial value and social responsibility, aligns with policy direction and earns public emotional recognition.

The establishment of the 'Robot Lab' marks a new stage in the family robotics industry with Vivo's entry.

Startups are often trapped in a cycle of 'high costs - low sales' due to limited R&D investment. Vivo, leveraging its scale effect, can compress the BOM costs of robots to consumer-level.

It is clear that the basis of Vivo's cost advantage — reusing the mobile phone supply chain, and directly procuring existing mature solutions for display screens, batteries, and other modules; spreading R&D costs, and the multi-scene reuse of AI and MR technology reduces marginal costs.

As a leading company in the smart phone industry, Vivo's entry into the robotics field will inevitably accelerate the speed and density of technological coupling, realizing 'brain-level integration' of the machinery and AI industries.

In this process, Vivo's role is not only as a hardware manufacturer but also as a 'connector of machinery and AI', as well as a 'bridge connecting the physical and digital worlds'.

AI applications represented by DeepSeek and robots together represent the top technological achievements of the digital world and the physical world, but these two worlds remain relatively independent and have not been perfectly connected.

"Robots are the future of the Smart Phone industry, bridging the gap between the physical world and the digital world." Hu Baishan believes that "with this, the future has arrived, and the Smart Phone industry is about to enter a new stage."

In this new stage of development, vivo is committed to creating ultimate robot products—robot brains and eyes—so that robots can "understand scenes, hear demands, and provide responses," thus offering users a brand new application experience and value.

The Smart Phone industry has entered a new stage, and for now, this assertion is highly relevant.

The Smart Phone market has been in a stagnant phase for several years. GenAI (Generative AI) technology is seen as a future hope to reshape this increasingly "traditional" industry and create incremental market opportunities.

However, there has not yet been a market consensus on how GenAI will reshape the industry.

Some have chosen to enter the New energy Fund track, building a comprehensive GenAI ecosystem for multiple scenarios; others claim to be "All in AI," but are limited by the development level of the Industry Chain technology, making progress not very obvious.

Now, vivo has also provided its own answer.

According to Goldman Sachs' forecast, by 2035, the global robot market size will reach 154 billion dollars. If Vivo can capture 20% of the market share in home scenario robots, the valuation of this Business will exceed 30 billion dollars, becoming the second growth curve after Smart Phone.

Clearly, this is also a long-term journey, and Vivo's robot goals are not something that can be achieved in the short term.

But as Hu Baishan said: "The responsibility of Technology companies is to continuously solve future social problems through scientific technology and innovation capabilities" — the endpoint of this technological long march may be a smarter and warmer family living scenario.