Samsung OZ Punting On AI To Drive Mobile Sales In 2025 As Consumers Complain Of AI Overload
Samsung Electronics mobile division has had a pretty good run up until now, with enough AI being packed into their last S24 Ultra to drive growth and upgrades, now the South Korean Company that is under pressure on multiple fronts is again punting on AI to drive growth with a new Galaxy S25 range that takes AI to a new level.
The challenge now is getting S23 and SS22 customer to upgrade while also trying to lure consumers from other brands who don’t have the AI offering that Samsung and Google are delivering in their latest smartphones.
The Company who claims their premium market share has grown in Australia but still refuse to supply any data to substantiate their claims despite overseas subsidiaries supplying data including in their home South Korean market.
Overnight the company launched three new devices at an event in California with the new range pricing pretty much the same as previous models.
According to Counterpoint Research Samsung has sustained an impressive pace of double-digit growth with its S series over the past two years with the Company delivering over 35 million units of their former Galaxy S24 range of devices.
According to Eric Chou Director, and Head of MX at Samsung Australia, the Company is confident that they are in a strong position to grow sales further this year because of the strong AI offering in their new S25 range.
However, he does admit to complexities around the amount of AI in their new devices and the possibility that some users of the device will find the new capabilities hard to get their head around.
As for the Australian market he said, “We know that the market is a little bit flat at the moment.”
He added “The affordable premium is the one area that has grown the fastest”.
“The ultra-premium has also done well with our entry level to premium doing well because of the Samsung S24 FE which has performed exceptionally well”.
Chou said that throughout the second half, Samsung witnessed an acceleration in sales, however he claimed that this could be about to taper “Off a bit in 2025”.
Re the complexity of AI, found in the Companies new Galaxy S25 series he said “The legacy for the Series is that it has the best hardware, the S25 series will continue to hold that position. What we are saying is that we do need to ensure that we are able to deliver what people want”.
“We want to make sure that not Al for AI sake. It’s really more about ensuring that it is intuitively built in, personalised while also allowing users to be able to do more with less”.
Some claim that the new device is going to put fear into a large slab of the target audience who don’t like to admit that they are technology dyslexic, and the complexity of AI is intimidating and “hard to understand”.
When this was put to Chou he said “I do agree with the observation around. There’s a lot of AR complexity that naturally causes a bit of fear as to what AI actually doing”.
He claims that ” foundation level security and privacy, is absolutely non non-negotiable” at Samsung and that the integration of their Knox security system delivers a high level of security for users.
“We want to take the complexities away and instead of actually having to take four steps to a complete, a single task, using Samsung’s new Its software will complete that task for you”.
The S25 starts at $1,399 a larger S25+ $1,699 and the top-tier S25 Ultra priced from $2,149 and up depending on memory.
Spanning 6.9 inches in size, the new Ultra model gains the most significant design changes and camera hardware upgrades.
One big standout is that all of the new models are slightly thinner and lighter, with the Ultra edition slimming down the borders around the display by 15%.
The S25 Ultra also gets a new Gorilla Glass screen that makes it 29% more resistant to cracking.
There is also a new titanium frame for the S25 Ultra that distinguishes it from the aluminium on the more affordable models.
Apart from an aggressive new version of AI Samsung has introduced an overhauled operating system interface dubbed One UI 7.
The AI features are primarily handled via Google Gemini, but there are also some on-device capabilities developed by Samsung itself.
At this stage, the nearest competitor appears to be the Google Pixel range of smartphones which will get most of the features found in the new Samsung S25 series.
One new capability called AI Select has been designed to work across the operating system to identify areas where artificial intelligence can be used, such as summarizing the transcript of a YouTube video or sending an alert to a person on a call that the call is being recorded.
The so-called cross app actions, allow users to ask the AI system to do multiple tasks in one command.
For instance, they can ask the device to find a local restaurant and provide reviews, while also adding a reservation to their calendar and text-messaging the details to friends.
There are also new user interfaces for AI, including a Now Brief section that proactively provides a summary for things like sleep data, weather forecasts, reminders, and calendar items. It also can make suggestions based on a user’s habits. Or the system could provide recommendations on when to leave for a meeting, based on traffic conditions and other calendar appointments.
All three S25 models use the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite that improves performance.
The graphics processing unit, or GPU, is 30% faster than last year’s models, Samsung said. The central processing unit, or CPU, gets a 37% bump, and the neural processing unit, or NPU, is 40% faster. The gains reflect Samsung moving to a 3-nanometer chip design for the first time in its Galaxy series.
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