Seamless war

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In 1999, the PC Internet exploded. Thomas Friedman said, "The world is flat."

In 2009, the mobile Internet emerged. Clay Shirky said, "The future is wet."

In 2025, AI swept across everything. We finally discovered that the future world is seamless.

From Steve Jobs opening the door to "integrated hardware and software" to the Internet of Things shouting "interconnection of all things", and now to the ecological integration war driven by AI, the competition logic of consumer hardware has completely changed. Future giants will not be determined by the strength of a single product, but by the ability to expand a wide enough product matrix externally and build a unified operating system internally, allowing data and services to flow freely between devices with a consistent and invisible experience.

The "seamlessness" in the AI era has long surpassed the Internet logic of "using one account everywhere". True seamless means making users "unaware". When users switch between mobile phones, computers, tablets, cars, headphones, and household appliances, they are no longer isolated islands but a unified "super device". You don't have to think about "what each device can do". You just need to issue an instruction, and the system will automatically dispatch the most suitable hardware to respond - coherent, natural, just like breathing.

Behind this is the in - depth integration and continuous insight of users' digital lives by technology companies. Hardware is no longer a functional island but a service node connected by intelligent agents. As the interaction mode shifts from clicking and touching to voice, gestures, and even thoughts, system - level capabilities have become the cornerstone of supporting the "seamless experience". This is also the track that Apple, Huawei, and Xiaomi have been fully betting on in recent years.

On September 16, 2025, Apple pushed the official version of iOS 26 to users and simultaneously announced new features for platforms such as iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and visionOS. This is the most significant update since the flat design of iOS 7 in 2013. Besides the obvious liquid - glass semi - transparent visual effect, the real highlight is the in - depth integration of Apple Intelligence at the system level, making it an intelligent layer permeating between devices.

Whether users switch from iPhone to Mac, from CarPlay to Vision Pro, the operation logic and visual language are highly unified: Mac can directly answer iPhone calls and run mobile apps; iPad achieves smoother multitasking with the new window system; the Continuity function makes the task continuation between devices almost imperceptible. A small detail especially shows the attention to detail: a new option "Keep audio on headphones" is added to prevent the music from suddenly playing externally when you approach a CarPlay - enabled vehicle while wearing AirPods - seamlessness also needs to respect the differences in scenarios.

In October 2024, Huawei officially released the native HarmonyOS NEXT. It achieved full - stack self - research in aspects such as the operating kernel, programming language, integrated development environment, AI framework, and large - scale model, becoming the third - largest operating system after iOS and Android.

The biggest improvement in experience brought by the native HarmonyOS is the seamless discovery and connection between devices. With the distributed soft bus and the unified task center, it has built a high - speed data channel, doubling the device interconnection speed. Users can seamlessly continue tasks between mobile phones, tablets, and computers without reopening applications. For example, when having a meeting on the HarmonyOS version of DingTalk, you only need to bring two devices close together and click on the pop - up window, and the meeting can be migrated instantly.

In October 2023, Xiaomi launched the Pengpai OS, positioning it as a "full - ecosystem for people, cars, and homes". It integrates the deeply customized Android and the self - developed Vela system at the bottom layer, focusing on solving the interconnection of IoT devices.

The Pengpai OS features "discovery upon approaching and triggering by gestures". When the mobile phone approaches the car infotainment system, the navigation automatically transfers to the central control screen; with a three - finger slide down, the content is immediately shared to the tablet or computer. The latest version emphasizes "active intelligence": the system learns users' habits and predicts device combinations. Saying "Turn on the movie - watching mode" will dim the lights, start the TV, and push the video to the screen; when a meeting reminder comes, the laptop automatically synchronizes the schedule, and the clipboard shares materials across devices.

The experience brought by future hardware products not only depends on the product itself but is also closely related to the ecological system it integrates into. The more convenient it is for users, the higher the technical complexity enterprises need to solve. As Lei Jun said, the reason for launching the Pengpai OS is that the complexity and large number of operating system branches involved in various devices, as well as the ecological connection barriers between different systems and protocols, exceed many people's imaginations.

In the major reshuffle of hardware driven by the AI revolution, if a company can only access others' systems, it will not only fail to achieve seamless integration but also widen the gaps. Passive access will gradually lead to the loss of the initiative in interacting with users and even the risk of being "pipelined".

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To achieve the ultimate seamless experience, relying solely on the system is not enough. It is necessary to go deeper into the chip level.

Self - developed chips can reduce the delay and power consumption caused by protocol conversion and eliminate compatibility problems at the root. Only by starting from the chip micro - architecture and analyzing the instruction pipeline can real refined scheduling be achieved. For example, when multiple devices are in standby and interconnected, the chip can only activate the low - power co - processing unit to maintain the connection, greatly improving the battery life.

The future seamless experience requires a large amount of real - time AI computing. Performing computing on the edge side is faster and safer than in the cloud. Self - developed chips are the prerequisite for building a distributed computing power network. Apple's heavy investment in researching baseband chips is to fill the "last shortcoming in the closed - loop ecosystem". The relationship between Huawei's Kirin chips and HarmonyOS, and the relationship between Xiaomi's Xuanjie chips and Pengpai OS follow the same logic - the chip serves as the same heart, providing a unified energy scheduling system; the system serves as the same brain, becoming the decision - making center; the AI - enabled cross - device interconnection technology serves as the same neural network, providing the perception and instruction system; and the hardware serves as the same set of limbs, meeting users' needs in different scenarios.

This also raises the ecological threshold higher, falling into the "chicken - and - egg" dilemma: without enough product touchpoints, developers will not be attracted; without developers, an application ecosystem cannot be built; without an ecosystem, users will not come, and enterprises will not dare to continuously invest in the system and chips.

The ecosystem is like a perilous peak, and there are challengers at different times. During the migration from the Internet to the mobile Internet, Microsoft, BlackBerry, and Nokia, the king of feature phones, all developed their own operating systems but soon failed. Ten years ago, LeEco tried to build a so - called "ecological synergy" starting from hardware, which led to the rapid collapse of the company.

Today, in addition to Apple, Huawei, and Xiaomi, other mainstream mobile phone manufacturers have also launched deeply modified systems based on Android, and several have tried to make chips; home appliance giants such as Haier and Midea have all laid out smart home solutions; Gree and NIO have started making mobile phones, and Li Auto wants to make robots; Dreame, which started with sweeping robots, has recently been expanding in various directions, planning to launch a series of products such as large home appliances, major kitchen appliances, and mobile phones, and has also publicly announced its plan to build cars and even drones.

Many people question the effectiveness of these strategies, and entrepreneurs are naturally aware of the risks. But when "seamlessness" becomes an inevitable trend, everyone is afraid of missing the next entry point.

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For small and medium - sized players who are unable to build their own ecosystems, there is still an opportunity for "vertical seamless". In the AI era, individual hardware must change its fragmented service model.

For example, telling your mobile phone "I want to go to Shanghai this weekend" will make the system automatically arrange the whole journey by calling relevant apps; the complex buttons on the air - conditioner remote control are replaced by natural language, and a vague description like "a bit cooler" can adjust the wind direction and humidity to make you feel comfortable.

Seamlessness is a transformation of the business paradigm. The seamless war, on the surface, is a battle of hardware, systems, and chips, but in essence, it is a war about "people".

From "The world is flat" to "The future is wet", and then to "The future world is seamless", technological evolution has always pointed in one direction: infinitely reducing the distance from users. This is not a physical approach but a "zero - friction" experience, a "zero - burden" perception, and a "zero - gap" emotion.

True seamless is not about stacking devices or forcing protocol compatibility but about accurately understanding people's intentions, actively adapting to scenarios, and naturally delivering services. It will make technology fade into the background, let the experience come to the forefront, and make users no longer feel that "I am using technology" but that "technology is at my service".

This article is from the WeChat official account "China Entrepreneur Magazine" (ID: iceo - com - cn). Author: He Yifan, Editor: Zhong Yunhua. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.