The decision by Samsung Electronics to incorporate the latest smartphones with artificial intelligence (AI) from Chinese search giant Baidu has captured the attention of Chinese consumers. The South Korean company’s China division and Baidu AI Cloud announced a strategic partnership at the end of January. This collaboration will result in the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, which was released in China on January 25, a week after its launch in the US, using Baidu’s Ernie large language model (LLM) and search engine to enhance mobile AI search functions. However, many Chinese consumers expressed doubts on social media that the flagship model of the Galaxy S24 may not be as good as the global model.
Baidu’s AI technology powers the Chinese version of Samsung’s latest flagship, the Galaxy S24. Photo: Bloomberg “Overseas is a very different world from the mainland,” said Weibo user “Sun Weilun”. He mentioned that during a visit to a Samsung store in Hong Kong to test different models, he found that the “Circle to Search” feature powered by Baidu provided fewer results compared to Google’s external one. Richard Zhang, a 30-year-old resident of Beijing, expressed his desire to purchase a foreign version of the Galaxy S24 to access the best AI functions. “I started thinking about this when I saw that [mainland] the machine recognizes Samsung phones as a different brand.” Baidu is recognized as one of the leading AI players in China, as it was the first tech company in the country to introduce its own ChatGPT platform with the launch of its Ernie Bot in March 2023. However, it has encountered a major obstacle. This is compounded by the competition from Chinese vendors such as Huawei Technologies, Oppo, and Vivo, which are also planning to release their LLMs or integrate AI products into their devices in the near future. Ivan Lam, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, acknowledged that the partnership with Baidu “demonstrates Samsung’s commitment to maintaining consistent operations in China over the long term.” In China, Samsung has priced the S24 and S24+ between 500 yuan to 800 yuan (US $ 70 to US $ 112) higher than the previous S23 and S23+ models, according to a recent analysis by Peng Peng, a wireless phone industry analyst at TechInsights. In contrast, Samsung maintained the same price tags in the US and decreased prices in Europe. Peng commented, “It appears that Samsung is not very competitive with domestic vendors in terms of value for money in the world’s largest smartphone market.”
