Samsung on market for deals with AI giants
Samsung is pursuing AI deals with tech leaders as it bets on artificial intelligence as the new front in its competition with Apple for dominance of the global smartphone market.
The Korean tech giant’s consumer device chief has said the firm is “open to strategic co-operation” with AI companies like OpenAI.
Samsung lost out against its US competitor last year, with Apple iPhone shipping more units than Samsung for the first time in 14 years.
Apple was set to ship around 243 million phones in 2025 while Samsung was forecast to notch 235, with the US firm’s success driven by its new iPhone 17 model.
This surprise reversal looked set to push Apple’s share of the smartphone market up to 19.4 per cent, outperforming Samsung on 18.7 per cent.
TM Roh, Samsung’s head of consumer devices, told the Financial Times striking deals with AI companies will be crucial to its expansion, as the firm seeks to regain control of the market.
Users demand a suite of AI options
Consumers are looking for a suite of AI options from their phones rather than relying on a single platform, Roh said.
While Apple is yet to rollout many of the AI features it announced last year, he said Samsung is leading the charge in providing greater choice of AI tools to customers.
Roh said: “We got into the preparation earlier than others, [and] that is how we have taken and maintained leadership in mobile AI.
“Consumers are not bound to one AI platform, they are utilising multiple AI models. We are open to all solutions .[…] choice, I believe, is how Galaxy AI appeals to consumers.”
Samsung recently unveiled its range of S26 divides and added a voice assistant powered by AI start-up Perplexity to its system.
The Korean tech firm already offers Google’s Gemini AI model on its devices, including a function which allows users to book taxis entirely hands-free.
Apple has also struck a deal to use Google Gemini, and last year entered talks with OpenAI’s ChatGPT to upgrade its struggling Siri voice assistant.