Half of smartphones sold in 2018 will have AI assistant

Half of smartphones sold globally this year will have an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, a report by an industry consulting firm showed Sunday.

According to Strategy Analytics (SA), 47.7 percent of smartphones sold on the global market in 2018 will be equipped with some kind of on-device AI assistant, up from 36.6 percent last year.

The report further finds that on-device AI is growing fast among smartphone vendors and by 2023, 89.9 percent of smartphones will have a built-in AI assistant.

In 2017, Google Assistant rose to be the top AI assistant with a 46.7 percent market share, followed by Apple’s Siri with 40.1 percent, it said.

The report said the market share of Google’s AI assistant is expected to climb to 51.3 percent this year and 60.6 percent by 2023.