During the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Deutsche Telekom (DT) lifted the veil on a project full of ambition: a smartphone where artificial intelligence is at the heart of the user experience. Called “AI Phone”, this device is developed in collaboration with Perplexity, known for its search engine boosted at AI, as well as Picsart and Google Cloud AI.
A risky bet on a market dominated by Apple and Samsung
« We become an artificial intelligence company “Said Claudia Nemat, head of tech and innovation at DT. The operator does not want to create his own language models, but rather develop AI agents capable of simplifying the lives of users.
Perplexity, which now weighs $ 9 billion, wants to go further than the simple information. “” Our AI will be able to book flights, manage your reservations, send emails, make calls … In short, it will really act for you “Said Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of the startup.
The AI will be everywhere in the device, especially via Magenta AI, an assistant developed by DT. And good news for those who do not want to change the phone: the application will also be available on Android and iOS, but only for the 300 million DT customers.
Deutsche Telekom plans to present his AI Phone in the second half of 2024, before an outing in 2026 below $ 1,000. It will first be marketed in Europe, but we do not yet know much about its design or operating system (even if the images suggest that it will run on Android).
The problem is that telecom operators have already tried to emancipate giants like Apple and Google … with little success. We remember the Fire Phone of Amazon or the partnerships with Mozilla, who have never managed to worry market leaders.
The challenge for DT and Perplexity will therefore be to convince users that this new IA ecosystem is worth it. Faced with tools like Google Gemini or Apple Siri already integrated into current smartphones, AI Phone will have to offer something really different.
For Perplexity, this partnership is a way of existing against Openai and Anthropic, by offering more concrete and interactive IA services. But is it enough to make the mastodons of the sector tremble?
AI Phone will also have to prove that it can offer a truly unique experience. For the moment, Deutsche Telekom and Perplexity are betting on the “waouh” effect of artificial intelligence, but history has already shown that a gimmick is not always enough to win the smartphones market.
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