As companies like Apple, Google and Samsung load their devices with AI, many consumers are still unimpressed — and unwilling to pay for those premium features.
As companies like Apple, Google and Samsung load their devices with AI, many consumers are still unimpressed — and unwilling to pay for those premium features.
Key takeaways:
A quarter of smartphone owners (25%) don’t find AI features helpful, 45% are reluctant to pay a monthly subscription fee for AI capabilities and 34% have privacy concerns.
A little over half (52%) of smartphone owners have no interest in purchasing a foldable phone.
The biggest motivation for US adult smartphone owners to upgrade their devices is longer battery life (61%), followed by more storage (46%) and better camera features (38%). Just 18% say their main motivator is AI integrations.
As smartphone makers including Apple, Google and Samsung place a growing emphasis on AI features in their latest devices, a CNET survey found a quarter of smartphone owners don’t find those capabilities particularly useful, and just 18% say AI integrations are their main motivator for upgrading their phone.
In fact, the biggest drivers for buying a new device, according to respondents, is longer battery life (61%), more storage (46%) and better camera features (38%).
This comes as Apple unveiled its iPhone 16 lineup on Monday, which will feature the company’s new Apple Intelligence suite of AI features when that rolls out later this year. Apple Intelligence includes capabilities like a smarter Siri, AI-powered writing tools and ChatGPT integration.
Google also leaned heavily into AI features when it unveiled the Pixel 9 series last month, spending much of its keynote discussing new Gemini functions like Live, which lets you have a natural-sounding, back-and-forth conversation with the virtual assistant. And at its July Unpacked event, Samsung similarly touted Galaxy AI, which can simplify tasks like translating messages and editing photos.
While these new features rely on generative AI to produce text or images or to enhance digital assistants, AI itself has been embedded in smartphones for years. For instance, your phone’s camera uses AI to process images and blur backgrounds in Portrait mode, and Siri and Google Assistant have always been AI-based (albeit using less advanced versions of the tech).
