One of the superficially most eye-catching demos at Mobile World Congress (MWC) was Huawei’s application of its Mate 10 Pro smartphone to drive a Porsche Panamera adapted for robotic operation. But closer inspection revealed that this was really just an attempt to galvanize developers into producing apps that exploit the neural processing unit (NPU) embedded in the Kirin 970 chip running the phone. To date Huawei has struggled to win interest in NPU from developers despite the well hyped AI tag, while the phone itself has failed to attract partnerships with any US carrier and therefore gain traction in that market. The phone has though sold well in Europe, and MWC 2018 in Barcelona seemed the ideal stage to amplify…