It was inevitable that this year at the MWC in Barcelona, at least one carrier would announce a significant effort to build a smartphone with a leading AI company. And here is: Deutsche Telekom (DT), said he is building a ”Phone ai“A low -cost headset created in close collaboration with embarrassment, along with picsart and others, as well as a new AI assistant application calling” Magenta Ai “.
DT will present the device during the second half of this year and start selling it in 2026 for a price of less than $ 1,000. Initially, it will target the European market, a spokesman at TechCrunch said.
“We are an AI company,” said Claudia Nemat, a member of the DT Board of Directors who oversees Telecom technology and innovation during a press conference on Monday. It is not the building of fundamental large linguistic models, it was quick to add: “But we make AI agents.”
Specifically, embarrassment – starting from Silicon Valley which is referenced Now that it is estimated at about $ 9 billion – it is thought to play a key role in the development of the phone. This is a signal of how starting, the most well -known for the AI genetic search engine today, takes steps to create more “preventive” products.
“The embarrassment moves from being just a response machine to an action machine,” said Aravind Srinivas, co -founder and chief executive of Perplexity, on the scene. “It will start doing things for you, not only answer questions. They will be able to close flights for you, reservations for you, send emails for you, send messages, call calls for you and all these things, such as Set Smart Utinders.”
Although this seems to be the first time that embarrassment has reduced a deal with a carrier to develop an AI interface for a smartphone, it already has a little experience for assistants: the embarrassment started an Android assistant in January which seems to be a possible model for this new “AI phone”.
The news is the latest development in a well -known story from the world of telecommunications. For years, carriers – both mobile and stable – have gone through ways to better compete with technology companies.
Specifically, they have focused on those who like Apple and Google, who have created operating systems and phones that greatly reduce telecommunications companies from the equation when it comes to making money around applications and “possess” this customer relationship. Over the years, we have seen partnerships with Mozilla to create a first phone to compete with these two. (The fire, as it was called, was not so hot.) And there were many hot years with Facebook, as the social network was also looking for a stronger base in the mobile world. (Meta, as it is now called, focuses on the material and telecommunications of the elsewhere now.)
Moving quickly and breaking things is not part of the telecommunications steering wheel. The embarrassment and Deutsche Telekom have been working together since they stayed in collaboration in April 2024, and DT first talked about an “AI phone” a whole year ago in the last year of the mobile world conference.
Nemit did not receive many details about the material, such as the specifications of the device, nor did it give information about who manufactures it and what operating system it will run (from the concepts, it looks like an Android flavor). We contacted DT directly and one spokesman said that these details would be revealed in the second half of the year.
Nemat noted that the phone would have a baked AI, with the experience built by the embarrassment “so you can experience the full monty,” he added: “AI on the lock screen”.
Other services on the phone will include AI from Google Cloud, Elevenlabs and Picsart, DT said.
Magenta AI, which will be a version based on applications by DT’s AI assistant, will be available for those who want to install it on their own Android or iOS devices as long as you are already one of DT’s 300 million customers, Nemat said.
Looking at the current fashion for all AI things – a widespread issue on MWC this year – AI phone is DT’s last attempt to gain a stronger base with consumers around a mooring material, along with the app when they simply can’t get users to buy their own device.
For embarrassment, the company competes with compatriots not only for the very good-rational Openai and humanity when it comes to building new AI tools for consumers, but also large technology companies such as Google, which has baked Gemini AI in its basic search products. Thus, moving to “Action” services, in collaboration with a telco, gives it a small point of differentiation, at least for now.
Here, it seems that embarrassment is leaning in the next phase of the way AI can improve users’ experience.
“These are the things that, earlier, you should do in your own way, learning how to use these different applications,” Srinivas said. “All of these things will start to get easier so you can focus your time and energy on problem solving …. This is really the next phase where Ai [is] Going to the transition from being just reactive and having suggestions to enter something that is just inherently there on your phone, always listening to and you can be able […] It helps you preventively. ”
It remains to be seen whether DT and embarrassment will be able to break the odd smartphone market, dominated by a small number of companies and has been in the years and even Leviathans such as LG Cash on their brands and back.
However, it shows how magnetic the Ai Pull is at the moment, how even Legacy companies see it as a possible panacea and how even newly established businesses are looking for safe ditches in the midst of intense competition.
