Too premature to monetise Galaxy AI: Samsung mobile chief TM ROH

Spending over ₹1 lakh on a flagship smartphone has been normalised but Samsung may soon set a new normal in India. It is now the first brand in India to breach the ₹2-lakh price point with the top-end Galaxy Z Fold6 (12GB, 1TB variant). Samsung justifies the new pricing by offering new hardware specifications, slight design changes and of course, there’s Galaxy AI.

For buyers, there’s an important question– how much is too much to spend on a new flagship smartphone in India? Now, this same question can be rephrased for Samsung– For how long prices of premium smartphones can keep on increasing?

With the sudden push towards “AI in smartphones”, thanks to the ChatGPT hype, Samsung has somewhat hinted at possibilities. The launch of Galaxy AI along with the Samsung Galaxy 24 series, earlier this year, wooed smartphone enthusiasts with unique generative AI camera features. However, soon people realised that there’s a tiny asterisk which informs Samsung Galaxy S24 series users that the Galaxy AI features “free until the end of 2025” and “different terms may apply for AI features provided by third parties”.

This footnote leads to the question- Can AI in smartphones become the next big revenue driver while brands intentionally keep premium smartphones relatively affordable in future? This is similar to the ad-revenue driver strategy of selling subsidised smartphones by the likes of Xiaomi and other Chinese brands, a decade back.

At the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2024 event in Paris, HT Tech had the chance to ask TM Roh, President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. Here are excerpts from the interview:

Q: What comes to your mind when we talk about an “AI smartphone”?

TM ROH: The unique characteristic of mobile devices is that it is what customers carry with them all the time, whenever, wherever. They get information, share and communicate the information, utilise the information when they want to. That is a very important and unique role of mobile devices.

When this unique attribute of mobile devices meets with the capability of AI, new features and functionality of mobile AI comes to life so it becomes an absolutely necessary feature in core platform for mobile devices and internally we say it is no longer a smartphone, but an AI phone. So, AI features are now inseparable from mobile devices, so much so it has become a core technology and core platform for mobile devices.

Mobile AI is only beginning, and as it further advances and becomes sophisticated, it will lead to new requirements for hardware specifications and there will be certain expansion in services and applications based on mobile AI.

I strongly believe that mobile AI will be a new driving force for mobile devices.

Q: How is Samsung looking at generating additional revenue from AI services on Galaxy smartphones?

TM ROH: As far as monetisation of AI services are concerned, mobile AI technologies are changing and progressing at such a fast speed and the usage scenario and use patterns are changing fast. And new services and applications tapping into AI technologies are emerging, so it will be too premature to mention how the AI services will be monetised.

I believe monetisation-related decisions should be and will be made based on comprehensive review of the customer voice and customer needs, market demands, market needs, and technological trends and changes.

Q: Will Samsung reserve Galaxy AI services for premium smartphones only? If not, how are you planning to get AI on affordable smartphones with less hardware capabilities?

TM ROH: Galaxy AI is basically a hybrid model AI that leverages on-device AI and cloud-based AI and combines them both based on the specific use cases and leverages relevant platforms. Like you have mentioned, for on-device AI to work properly, of course it requires hardware that is adequately built to execute AI workloads. So hardware requirements will be considered and the relevant on-device engine and models will be decided. Only then, the optimal level of performance and execution of AI workloads can happen.

At Samsung Mobile with Galaxy devices, even before the advent of Generative AI, which became very popular, we always leveraged AI for the advancement of native app performance including camera performance and game performance. To do that, we also progressed and advanced NPU performance. Thanks to these strengths, we were able to disseminate and expand the Galaxy AI at a faster clip, expanding its availability on Galaxy devices that were launched after 2022 including Galaxy S22 and other foldable products. That’s the strength of Samsung democratising Galaxy AI very swiftly.

To answer your question, would the expansion of Galaxy AI reach the A-series smartphones? Because of the hardware limitation, it will be quite difficult to enable full experience of Galaxy AI on A-series. Nonetheless, part of Galaxy AI features and capabilities that can be supported by A-series hardware are being implemented and we will continue to do so.

It will be done by case-by-case approach and native app-by-app approach. We have done that and we will continue to do that going forward. We are also reviewing and taking into consideration expanding cloud-based Galaxy AI features to A-series in a case-by-case manner.

Samsung mobile chief TM Roh stressed that the company plans to make Galaxy AI available to as wide consumers as possible. “We will make continuous efforts for that. To do that, we are continuously engaging in R&D efforts to make on-device models more optimised, more lightweight, and we are advancing the engine and models further and further so that we can apply Galaxy AI to as many models as possible,” added Roh.

While the first step appears to be hooking as many users as possible to Galaxy AI on Samsung smartphones, the company has time till the end of 2025 to figure out monetisation.