San Jose: Korean smartphone maker Samsung has called out its Chinese rivals by questioning the “trust factor” associated with these brands and wondering if consumers in India can rely on them enough to share private information for meeting their future artificial intelligence (AI) needs.

JB Park, President and CEO, Samsung Southwest Asia, added that the company also does not believe Apple will remain the dominant smartphone brand in India’s $800-plus super-premium segment indefinitely, asserting that consumers shifting towards a certain “fruit company” brand is a “very subjective” phenomenon of a certain period of time alone.

Samsung’s comments come at time when its faces stiff competition in India from Chinese brands in the lower-price, high-volume segments and has fallen behind the iPhone maker in the $800-plus super-premium segment. Samsung, on its part, is counting on taking AI mainstream by building AI functionalities into its entire range of smartphones across price-points to galavanise sales.

“…adoption of AI by Chinese handset brands has been very fast, but the thing is are these trusted brands that you give your private information to for your AI needs…that’s a perception thing, something the consumer needs to decide on which brands to rely on,” Park said in response to a query from ET.

He conceded that while a California brand (read: Apple) in the $800-plus smartphones segment and certain Chinese brands at the lower price-levels ($400-600 and $250-400 segments) are providing strong competition in India, Samsung’s core interest remained in the “focus of consumers” instead of brand competition, especially since the premium portion only comprises 15% of the Indian smartphone market.

As per latest data collated by Counterpoint Research, between January-to-November 2024, Apple had a dominant 72% market share vs Samsung’s 21% in the $800-plus super-premium segment that contributed around 7-9% of overall smartphone shipments. Likewise, in the $400-$600 phones category, Samsung’s 21% market share was behind Chinese rival, Vivo (38%), according to the handset market tracker. The $400-$600 phones segment accounted for around 6% of overall smartphone shipments in India during the same period.

Park conceded that the Indian smartphone market remained very competitive, and where Samsung is unlikely to win every battle in all price segments. He, though, added that the Korean company remained focussed on addressing the Indian consumer’s needs by building differentiated products, in which AI features would play a prominent role going forward, especially since the technology is still in its infancy.

“We are at the beginning of the AI era…its future will unfold in ways that nobody knows…it’s like when we first experienced the Internet 20 years ago, nobody knew back then that we would have food delivered to homes via Zomato using the internet to monitor where the delivery boy was located,” the top Samsung executive said.

Separately, Samsung’s Park expects consumer electronics penetration to look up sharply in India. This, he said, would result in Samsung’s India top-line mix changing to a 50:50 ratio with the quantum of revenues stemming from the mobile phones and electronic appliances businesses drawing level within three years. At present, the mobile phones business generates 70% of Samsung’s India revenues while appliances garners the balance 30%.

The Korean electronics major also plans to double its maze of service centres in India’s smaller towns to 800 by end-2025 to give consumers in untapped rural markets a first-hand experience of latest mobile tech trends, including AI.

“Today, everything is available on YouTube, Instagram, as in a consumer can experience things virtually…but Samsung’s strategy is to build experience stores across all towns in rural markets, and our field/sales force in these locations can directly help consumers experience latest mobile technologies, something which isn’t possible online, and underlines the importance of the offline segment.”