Samsung's Galaxy S24 series of smartphones in China will hit the markets by ditching Google and using Chinese tech firm Baidu's product. Contrary to other markets across the globe, Samsung is using the capabilities of Baidu instead of Google to power AI features on Chinese variants of Galaxy S24 series smartphones. This collaboration between the South Korean brand and the Chinese firm was highlighted during a recent unveiling event of the smartphone lineup in China.
According to a CNBC report, both Samsung and Baidu issued a joint statement in which they emphasised that the Chinese variants of Galaxy S24 will be leveraging Baidu's Ernie chatbot technology. Ernie will enable new devices to have AI translations, text summarisations, and other productivity features.
This focus on Baidu showcases a major divergence from Samsung's global launches in which Google's Gemini AI underpinned the headline Galaxy AI capabilities. The primary reason behind Samsung taking this step is believed to be Google’s limited presence and services in China due to government restrictions.
Baidu's Ernie Better Than Google's Gemini?
Earlier last year, Baidu gained approval from Chinese officials to deploy Ernie after initially unveiling the chatbot in 2021. Baidu launched Ernie 4.0 in October 2023 and the company claims that it matches and even exceeds the abilities of Google’s new GPT-4 system in areas such as language understanding and text generation.
In the joint statement, Samsung and Baidu highlighted Ernie’s text summarisation skills while reiterating that it can “summarise lengthy content into clear, intelligently organised formats.” This aligns with the real-time translation and other AI features that impressed the Galaxy S24 launch in the US and other Western markets.
The South Korean smartphone maker aims to showcase its AI collaborations with leading players in each market, however, it ultimately faces an uphill battle to revive its sales in China. Meanwhile, Chinese homegrown brands such as Oppo and Vivo now thoroughly dominate the smartphone arena of the nation.