With the continuous expansion of AI applications, the AI craze is expected to bring a new round of purchasing trends to smartphones. On Wednesday local time, the two major competitors in the smartphone industry, Apple and Samsung, have made new moves in the AI field.

On the Apple side, Bloomberg cited informed sources as saying that they plan to significantly increase the shipment of the new iPhone 16 in the second half of this year. It is reported that Apple plans to ship at least 90 million units, hoping to stimulate demand for its new products through AI services. Apple mainly believes that its newly launched "Apple Smart" system may boost demand for new smartphones.

Image source: Paixin Network

A source familiar with the matter said that Apple recently revealed to its suppliers and partners that its goal is to increase the shipment volume of the new iPhone by about 10% compared to the previous generation. Apple's shipment volume of iPhone 15 in the second half of last year was about 81 million units. Insiders say that the company is increasingly confident that some of the "Apple Intelligence" features added to the iPhone 16 will help boost demand when the model is launched later this year. Apple has no comment on this news.

It is reported that "Apple Intelligence" is Apple's latest personal intelligence system. Last month, Apple disclosed new developments in AI at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), including building a partnership with OpenAI, launching a suite that can prioritize push notifications, summarize text, generate images, and more powerful Siri.

In order to establish a foothold in the field of AI smartphones, Apple has partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Apple products, forming an "AI family bucket" that includes AI functions such as intelligent assistants, email summarization, image modification, and automatic translation. In Apple's view, the launch of AI phones will drive the emergence of a "phone replacement wave" among Apple users, effectively boosting phone sales.

As for Samsung, on Wednesday (July 10th) local time, Samsung officially launched two Galaxy Z series AI folding screen phones, Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6. Samsung's new Galaxy Z series phones are characterized by being lighter and thinner, both equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen3 processors, optimized for AI computing processing, and adopting a dual track hinge structure to enhance overall performance.

Image source: CCTV screenshot

It is reported that Samsung has been launching foldable smartphones since 2019, and the new phones are equipped with AI artificial intelligence functions, including the updated Note Assist function, which provides functions such as meeting recording, meeting content summarization, recording transcription, and translation. Google's AI assistant Gemini is also directly built into mobile phones, allowing users to experience generative AI functionality.

Samsung believes that consumers will be willing to pay higher prices for higher end AI smartphones, so Samsung has also raised the starting prices of two new phones, which are $1900 and $1100 respectively, $100 higher than the previous generation models.

Samsung has innovated the foldable screen form and accelerated the arrival of the Galaxy AI era, "said Lu Taiwen, President of Samsung Electronics' Mobile Communications Division.