On-Device AI Driving Advances in Smartphones, Says SA

On-device AI has become the most important technology in smartphones, reported Strategy Analytics Wednesday, saying 71% of smartphones sold globally this year will use AI. Smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max and Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G, run machine learning and deep learning tasks using dedicated AI cores and co-processors with little or no data transmitted to the cloud. Smartphone and chipset vendors are moving to add on-device AI computational power to enable edge AI computing, said the researcher. AI is being used on smartphones for intelligent power optimization, imaging, virtual assistants and device performance improvement, delivering lower latency, better data privacy and lower power consumption, said analyst Ville-Petteri Ukonaho. Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant thus became “more intelligent and aware of their environment,” he said. Some 80% of smartphones globally will have virtual assistants this year, growing to 97% by 2025, said SA. Camera AI, a top selling point of imaging-focused smartphones, enables features such as object recognition and motion detection, said analyst Ken Hyers. About 30% of smartphones have AI-enhanced functionality.