Samsung to kick off year of AI phones with new launch this month in San Jose

By Yoolim Lee and Vlad Savov | Bloomberg

The world’s most prolific smartphone maker is leaning into artificial intelligence as the key to unlocking greater sales this year.

Samsung Electronics Co. announced it plans to launch its next flagship device on Jan. 17 in San Jose, California — likely to be known as the Galaxy S24 — with a livestreamed event. The teaser to the launch promises only that “Galaxy AI is coming.” In past years, Samsung and fellow mobile makers have relied on improvements in camera technology and flexible displays to stand out, but 2024 promises to be a year where added AI capabilities take center stage.

More than a billion smartphones with built-in generative AI are expected to be shipped by the end of 2027, according to Counterpoint Research estimates. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E tools, which generate text or visual responses to users’ queries, are at the forefront of a generative-AI wave that’s swept across the tech industry — and helped make Nvidia Corp. a trillion-dollar company by providing the key AI-training accelerators. The next step in advancing the technology is to integrate it into devices, as US chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. has touted over the past year.

“Samsung and Qualcomm are immediate leaders as current product offerings and capabilities position them as first movers,” the Counterpoint researchers wrote in December. “Similar to what it did with foldables, Samsung is likely to capture almost 50% share for the next two years, followed by key Chinese OEMs like Xiaomi, Vivo, Honor and Oppo.”

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