Samsung Gulf posts 20% rise in Galaxy S orders amid ‘challenging’ start to AI smartphone era

Circle to Search is most popular Galaxy AI feature among users in the Gulf

DooHee Lee, president of Samsung Gulf Electronics, at the Middle East launch of the Samsung Galaxy S25 in Dubai. Alvin R Cabral / The National

Samsung Gulf Electronics has posted a 20 per cent annual increase in orders for its Galaxy S flagship phones, amid a "challenging" period of pushing the adoption of artificial intelligence in smartphones, a senior executive has said.

Gulf orders for the Galaxy S25 series, launched at the South Korean company's Unpacked event last month, remained strong, up by a fifth compared to last year's Galaxy S24, as Samsung increased its generative AI features, said Fadi Abu Shamat, head of Samsung Gulf's mobile experience division.

"I can openly say last year was a bit challenging year because we were introducing a new paradigm shift in the sense that we're introducing AI on a smartphone for the first time," he told The National on the sidelines of the Gulf launch of the Galaxy S25 series in Dubai on Thursday. "That poses a lot of risks and a lot of challenges, [but] what we've seen is that adoption rate really surpassed even our own metrics and expectations."

Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest mobile phone manufacturer, decided to forego significant hardware upgrades to focus on a refreshed Google Gemini AI platform with the Galaxy S25, as it attempts to be the top player in generative AI-enabled devices.

Samsung and California-based Google have long been partners and the improvement of Gemini's integration on Galaxy S25 devices can be viewed as a direct challenge to Apple's collaboration with OpenAI, which introduced ChatGPT and brought generative AI to the fore. Samsung and Google are also working on an extended reality headset, known as Project Moohan.

Reviews of the Galaxy S25 – including by The National – largely pointed out the lack of significant upgrades. But Samsung is focused on its new cross-app feature, which allows users to tap into several applications with a single command.

In particular, Circle to Search, a Google-powered search function that involves drawing a circle around anything on a supported Galaxy S device, was the most popular AI function for Samsung. About 67 per cent of consumers in the region say they use it, Mr Abu Shamat said.

The cross-app feature is available on Samsung and Google apps, in addition to WhatsApp and Spotify, but "you'll see the number of those apps and integration building up more", he added.

Meanwhile, the integration of generative AI into smartphones is already influencing purchasing decisions. Nearly 60 per cent of smartphone users intend to purchase a generative AI-enabled smartphone within the next year, with the trend being strongest in the US, Germany and France, data from Counterpoint Research shows.

Five out of the top 10 best-selling smartphones in 2024 had generative AI capabilities, with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra among them, the Hong Kong-based research firm said this week.