Samsung’s throwing an AI party and everyone’s invited. At least that’s what it felt like at Galaxy Unpacked in Paris last week, where the company unveiled more products than you can count on one hand while making its AI prowess the focal point of the event.
If that makes the company sound a little boastful, it’s important to note that Samsung was more than happy to share credit for its Galaxy AI breakthroughs, which include some impressive translation and photo-editing tools.
Once the big product announcements — the Galaxy Ring, Watches and Z Flip and Fold — were out of the way, Samsung had one last surprise before the event wrapped up. The company brought out Google SVP of Devices and Services Rick Osterloh to tell the crowd how Google and Samsung had worked together on Galaxy AI.
What was puzzling about Osterloh’s appearance was that he didn’t have anything new or different to add. Instead, he used his stage time to reiterate how “deeply committed” he is to Google’s partnership with Samsung. You could read his speech either as the least romantic wedding vows of all time, or as a show of strength — a warning to rivals that these two juggernauts are a package deal when it comes to AI.
Rivals, say, like Apple.
Just last month, Apple announced its own AI platform, Apple Intelligence, which will help it compete with Samsung’s Galaxy AI. With competition between the world’s two biggest smartphone makers just as close as ever, both companies understand that how they deploy AI in their devices could make all the difference to their success in the coming years.
For Samsung, this means forming an ever-stronger alliance with fellow Apple rival Google, maker of the Gemini AI system, in the hopes that together they can cook up AI features and tools that will allow them to woo you and dominate the market. “As Apple ramps up its efforts with AI, Samsung and Google need to consolidate their first-mover advantage with Galaxy AI and Gemini,” said CCS Insight chief analyst Ben Wood.
The battle’s only just getting started.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend
Samsung and Google weren’t always so buddy-buddy with one another. Around a decade ago, Samsung was pushing its own Linux-based Tizen operating system as a potential replacement for Android, particularly for wearables. It looked, if anything, like the two were diverging.
Over the past few years, Samsung has come back into the Google fold in a big way — a move that’s likely motivated in no small part by advances in AI that mean it needs to up its game, says Carolina Milanesi, president of research firm Creative Strategies.
“All of this cannot be done by a single company,” said Samsung Mobile’s EVP lead Won-Joon Choi, speaking at an event following Galaxy Unpacked in Paris. “The whole industry needs to come together and work together to enable this.”
On stage, Choi was joined by Jenny Blackburn from Google and Don McGuire from chipmaker Qualcomm. Both companies make technology that’s critical to Samsung’s success in the smartphone market, and to its burgeoning AI aspirations.
So far, the most popular AI feature on Samsung’s phones, according to the company’s own insights, has been Circle to Search, a Google creation. For Google, the question was which was “the right first device” to launch the feature on, said Blackburn. When it comes to hardware, Google could easily have tapped its own Pixel phones to showcase its biggest breakthroughs. But only one company has a mobile market share to rival Apple, and that’s Samsung.
Watch this: ‘Circle to Search’ Lets Users Google From Any Screen
“Google has put a lot of focus on its Pixel devices, but the secret to success is getting firmly behind Samsung given it is the undisputed leader in premium Android smartphones,” said Wood. “That’s where all the action on AI is right now.”
In the end, the company selected the Samsung Galaxy S24 series to debut Circle to Search, in what Choi described as “a perfect example of product collaboration.” Together, the pair formed a kind of tag team, he added, with Samsung bringing to the table a deep understanding of user behavior and Google bringing extensive knowledge about search.
It’s clear that these two companies need each other now, perhaps more than ever before. Google has its pick of Android phone makers as partners, but a powerful alliance is required to successfully take on tech’s biggest kahuna of all.
Open hearts, open minds, open… AI
None of what Google and Samsung have achieved together would be possible without the Snapdragon chipsets built by a third essential, if more understated partner, Qualcomm. (Apple makes its own chips.) As with Google, it’s deep in Qualcomm’s DNA to juggle multiple tech partners, from phone and laptop companies to automakers, all with their own requirements and goals.
For other companies, this level of openness might be new, but AI has made these close partnerships more essential than ever, McGuire said in an interview. Even today’s most successful tech companies might need to adapt and change to keep up, he adds. Let’s hope Apple is taking notes.
“Apple is a unique player in the market,” said Milanesi. But, she added, the fact that it has a new partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI (which also has a foundational relationship with Microsoft) shows that it’s not going it totally alone. The company also seems open to the idea of other LLMs being integrated into its own AI offering. Whether this will be enough to make Apple Intelligence competitive remains to be seen — it’s only just getting started.
In the meantime, Samsung is cozying up not just to Qualcomm and Google, but to Microsoft too. “Samsung has the fact that they’re talking about the open ecosystem, and they want to continue to play that role of being everybody’s best friend,” said Milanesi.
In spite of its enduring image as the cool kid of tech, this is one party Apple is very much not invited to. Apple will tell you it never even wanted to go in the first place, but it will be interesting to see which partners the famously independent company starts to invite into its special secret clubhouse anytime soon. We’ll be watching, and you can bet Samsung and Google will be too.
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