Indian consumers the biggest users of Galaxy AI: Samsung's Park

Samsung on Tuesday is hosting its first Galaxy Unpacked event of the year in San Jose, California, and will launch the latest line of its flagship Galaxy S series smartphones.

In an interaction with select media ahead of the event, J.B. Park, Samsung's Southwest Asia CEO, said the brand plans to double the number of its Experience stores from 400 to 800 this year. This is in line with the company’s efforts to expand its retail footprint in India beyond metros. Park also hinted that the company might manufacture the Galaxy S25 series at its Noida facility this year.

“We are also focussed on smaller towns that have seen stronger adoption of premium smartphones,” Park said.

When asked about how the brand sees competition in the smartphones segment, Park said that without competition, “it becomes boring”, and the company only focussed on customers.

Admitting that the Indian market was “very competitive”, Park said, “Do we win in every battle? In every price segment? We don't. But our focus is consumer experience and developing differentiation factors for the future.” Park said that this will help them beat Chinese brands. Speaking about Samsung's Chinese rivals in the smartphone segment, Park said, “if you look at only month by month or quarter by quarter, definitely they're tough competition”.

However, Park also said, “I'm happy to share that the sales of S24 series, broke all the records in India… Indian consumers are the biggest users of Galaxy AI features such as circle to search and call assistant.”

Talking about AI, Park said it was a key feature Indians look for when purchasing a smartphone. When asked about AI's use-cases on which Samsung is bullish, he cited productivity and entertainment or personalisation. “In productivity, AI will assist in creating documents, helping you to formalise [them] in a much better way at your workplaces... And personalisation or entertainment. (The) camera feature is just one step, but beyond that, AI will assist in multiple ways to make your lifestyle easier," he said, adding that AI still has massive scope and newer use cases to be discovered.

While premiumisation has become a key trend in the smartphones segment in India, Park said that monetisation from AI will be the next big thing. “Monetisation will happen across industries. The technology in the future... that is being provided [free now] will [only] be available for a certain fee. It's a new trend that (is happening) across the electronic sector even in the EV (industry). So, AI will be charged as a service in the future,” Park said.