Samsung’s “Galaxy S24” series of smartphones will be released in the Chinese market by abandoning Google and adopting products from Chinese high-tech company Baidu. In contrast to other markets around the world, Samsung uses Baidu’s capabilities rather than Google’s to power its AI capabilities in the Chinese version of its Galaxy S24 series smartphones. This collaboration between a Korean brand and a Chinese company attracted attention at a recent smartphone lineup launch event in China.
According to a report by CNBC, both Samsung and Baidu released a joint statement highlighting that the Chinese version of the Galaxy S24 will leverage Baidu’s Ernie chatbot technology. Ernie brings his AI translation, text summarization, and other productivity features to your new devices.
This focus on Baidu marks a significant departure from Samsung’s global announcement, which saw Google’s Gemini AI powering its headline Galaxy AI feature. Samsung is believed to have taken this step mainly because Google’s presence and services in China are limited due to government regulations.
Is Baidu’s Ernie better than Google’s Gemini?
Early last year, Baidu received approval from Chinese authorities to introduce Ernie after debuting the chatbot in 2021. Baidu will launch Ernie 4.0 in October 2023, and the company claims it will match and even exceed the capabilities of Google’s new GPT-4 system in the following areas: as language comprehension and text generation.
In a joint statement, Samsung and Baidu emphasized Arnie’s text summarization skills and reiterated that he is “able to condense long content into a clear and intelligently organized format.” This is in line with real-time translation and other AI features that inspired the launch of the Galaxy S24 in the US and other Western markets.
South Korean smartphone makers aim to tout AI collaborations with leading companies in each market, but will ultimately struggle to recover sales in China. Meanwhile, domestic Chinese brands such as Oppo and Vivo currently completely dominate the domestic smartphone sector.