Chinese manufacturer Huawei has been on the brink of the big time for some years now, gently edging up the list of most popular phone manufacturers and, earlier this year, overtook Apple to the number two position, with only Samsung ranking above it. Much of that was down to the Huawei P20 Pro, released in the Spring and chiefly noticeable for an astonishing photographic capability thanks to three rear cameras, all made in conjunction with Leica. Today, the company revealed its latest phone, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. Huawei's timetable sees two main releases a year, with the bigger-screen Mate Series taking the autumn slot. Quite a lot actually, and while some manufacturers seem to offer incremental upgrades every six or 12 months, the Mate 20 Pro is stuffed to the gills with innovation, including a super-cool reverse wireless charging feature.

Huawei's new Mate 20 Pro has a massive screen, three cameras on the back and a fingerprint scanner embedded in the display. The new top-end phone from the Chinese firm aims to secure its place at the top of the market alongside Samsung, having recently beaten Apple to become the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in August. The Mate 20 Pro follows Huawei's tried and trusted format for its Mate series: a huge 6.39in QHD OLED screen, big 4,200mAh battery and powerful new Huawei Kirin 980 processor – Huawei's first to be produced at 7 nanometres, matching Apple's latest A12 chip in the 2018 iPhones. New for this year is an infrared 3D facial recognition system, similar to that used by Apple for its Face ID in the iPhone XS, and one of the first fingerprint scanners embedded in the screen that is widely available in the UK, removing the need for a fingerprint scanner on the back or a notch on the front. The Mate 20 Pro is water resistant to IP68 standards and has a sleek new design reminiscent of Samsung's S-series phones, with curved glass on the front and back.

Huawei has released its Atlas computing platform, which is powered by its new Ascend series of artificial intelligence chips. It announced the new devices during Huawei Connect 2018, its annual conference in Shanghai. "The Atlas intelligent computing platform integrates various forms of products, such as modules, cards, boards, edge stations, and appliances, to build an all-scenario AI infrastructure covering the end, edge, and cloud," Huawei said. Huawei also said that the new Atlas platform is an evolution of the cloud hardware platform it released last year, and consists of several devices. These include the Atlas 200 AI accelerator module aimed at terminals, the Atlas 300 AI accelerator card designed for data centre use, the Atlas 500 AI edge station, and the Atlas 800 AI appliance, positioned for enterprises. The key features of Huawei's new Atlas product line are summarised below:

For all the focus manufacturers have been placing on digitisation, and especially on intelligent automation technologies, AI has yet to have a significant impact on the factory floor. This is about to change, believes Harald Bauer of McKinsey. "Until now, AI has been applied in a few niche areas by some, though by no means all, manufacturers," he says. "The enablers are in place, however, to allow more manufacturers to apply AI in a wide range of uses, and at scale." These enablers include high existing levels of digitisation and automation, the availability of voluminous data and access to the enormous computing power existing in the cloud.

Flying cars, augmented reality glasses and contact lenses that can detect diabetes: They're all innovations born out of Google X, the skunkworks division of Alphabet. Three years ago Spanish telco giant Telefónica established Alpha, a lab in Barcelona staffed by around 100 people, working in stealth on innovative technology that holds the promise of a potential new revenue streams. The person running all things AI at the lab is Pascal Weinberger, 21. Weinberger is originally from Germany and like many other computer programmers is self-taught. He dropped out of a bachelor's degree, having "enrolled to keep my parents happy," but by 15 had already taken several remote courses in programming at MIT.

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei is driving the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to build smart cities. At Huawei Connect 2018 in Shanghai, China, the company held a Smart City Summit with the theme "Activate Intelligence to Build Better Smart Cities". It featured discussions with industry experts and smart city practitioners on how to build new smart cities using AI. "Huawei is committed to becoming a smart city enabler and promoter by providing a city nervous system," said Zheng Zhibin, president of the global smart city business department at Huawei Enterprise. "Currently, Huawei is developing a ' AI Smart City Digital Platform' which is built upon the strategy of'Platform Ecosystem'.

Will black box AI fly?Andy Kelly on Unsplash enhanced by CogWorld With current advances in technology and Artificial Intelligence, most major companies are going to great lengths to attract the right talent and showcase their expertise in the field. Today having a futurist among its top rank management is not an eccentric fad, but a competitive necessity. Google is well-known for its collaboration with Ray Kurzweil. While we all know about the AI conquests of IBM, Amazon and Google, less is being revealed about machine learning projects in the "traditional" industry of telecom operators. Coming from a telecommunications background, I thought the balance should be restored.

Huawei has announced two new chips for artificial intelligence applications. The Ascend AI IP and chip series, the world's first AI IP and chip series that natively serves all scenarios, providing optimal TeraOPS per watt. The Ascend series delivers excellent performance per watt in every scenario, whether it's minimum energy consumption or maximum computing power in data centers. Their unified architecture also makes it easy to deploy, migrate, and interconnect AI applications across different scenarios. The Ascend 910 and Ascend 310 chips, which were announced at today's event, mark Huawei's leading AI capabilities at the chip level – the bottom layer of the stack.

Technology giant Huawei aims to help train one million artificial intelligence (AI) talents in the next three years to boost the fast-expanding sector. Huawei will provide free online training, organise boot camps and collaborate with industry players. It will also set up a one billion yuan (S$199 million) fund for universities and research institutes to support AI talent development. Mr Zheng Yelai, Huawei's vice-president and president of its cloud business unit, announced this yesterday, the last day of the Huawei Connect Conference in Shanghai. The move is in line with China's push to become a global AI powerhouse in the next decade.

Mobile carriers and industry pundits can gush all they want about the wonders of 5G. But blinding-fast downloads and self-driving cars mean little to consumers if they're either fearful or ignorant of the technology. Those are two of the top marketing challenges facing the telecommunications industry as it begins the rollout of fixed and mobile 5G, a new consumer survey suggests. According to the poll, conducted in September by RepeaterStore, a San Francisco systems integrator and cellular equipment reseller, most consumers (59 percent) aren't aware of 5G's impending arrival, and 38 percent couldn't care less. More disconcerting for carriers: Nearly one out of three respondents (30 percent) believe cell signals cause cancer.