Demand for GenAI smartphones rings louder

Suddenly, artificial intelligence (AI) smartphones have caught the fancy of Indian consumers.

- SURAJEET DAS GUPTA

Though adoption still lags behind global trends, as much as 13 per cent of total smartphone shipments in volume in the first half (H1) of 2025 in India were generative AI (GenAI) smartphones, compared to a mere 3 per cent in the same period last year, according to data from Counterpoint Research.

Globally, adoption of GenAI smartphones has been much faster. In H1 2025, their share of total smartphones sold doubled to 30 per cent, compared to only 15 per cent in the same period last year. GenAI smartphones are mobile devices that leverage large-scale, pre-trained GenAI models to create original content or perform contextually aware tasks.