India key market for AI, will scale up R&D, says Samsung mobile biz head

South Korean tech major Samsung will raise investments in Indian R&D centres at Bengaluru and Noida that have played a key role in development of AI features for its latest smartphone Galaxy S25, the company's President and Head of Mobile eXperience (MX) Business T M Roh said on Thursday and added that the firm expects a larger role from these research facilities in future.

Besides, India with its large size of young demography is an important market for the South Korean chaebol for the development and sales of its Galaxy AI technology, he said.  "India, keen to adopt the latest technologies and innovations, is a very important country for Samsung in both Galaxy AI development and sales and will always remain our top priority," said Roh at a media round-table after the launch of its flagship smartphone S25 here.

Roh further said the young population of India is "highly receptive" to innovative features. The new smartphone, S25, has integrated Hindi, besides Korean and English, as one of the languages with Google's voice assistant Gemini Live feature, in which India R&D centres played a key role.

"In particular, the Indian market, with young population, is highly receptive to innovative features, and we see that use of AI features in this market is higher than the global average. That's why the new AI features in Galaxy S25 were developed with Indian language as a top priority," he said.

Moreover, the company's India R&D centres at Noida and Bangalore are helping in "developing, upgrading and differentiating features" for Galaxy AI, and also for other Galaxy products.

"Thus, for the investment in the Indian R&D centres for given the importance of our resource centres in Noida and Bengaluru, their role is bound to grow, and we will continue to upgrade their contribution," said Roh.

Samsung also has plans to expand the Gemini Live feature for more languages, in which the India R&D centres are expected to play a key role.

"We are developing, upgrading and differentiating features for Galaxy AI, and also for other Galaxy products... we are starting with these three languages, with S25 Gemini, and then we will expand to other languages as well. So once again, you can see the importance of the Indian market to us, as well as the contribution that is being made by the Indian research centres," said Roh.

Samsung's R&D centres in India are the largest outside South Korea.

Responding to a query, Roh said Samsung is taking a "hybrid approach" by integration of its own AI apps with Google's Gemini.

It is having a "open collaboration philosophy" under which Samsung has kept up long-standing partnerships with industry-leading innovative companies.

He further said the industry is currently at an "inflection point", moving from smartphones to AI phones.

Samsung is also working with a few telecom operators in some countries on 3GPP-based satellite connectivity for S25 models, though the company did not share much details.