It was inevitable that this yr at MWC in Barcelona, no less than one service would announce a serious effort at constructing a smartphone with a high AI firm. And right here it’s: Deutsche Telekom (DT), stated that it’s constructing an “AI Phone,” a low-cost handset created in shut collaboration with Perplexity, together with Picsart and others, plus a brand new AI assistant app it’s calling “Magenta AI.”
DT will unveil the system within the second half of this yr, and it’ll begin promoting it in 2026 for a price ticket of lower than $1,000. Initially, it will likely be aimed on the European market, a spokesperson instructed TechCrunch.
“We have gotten an AI firm,” Claudia Nemat, a DT board member who oversees tech and innovation on the telecom, stated throughout a press convention Monday. It’s not constructing foundational massive language fashions, she was fast so as to add, “however we do the AI brokers.”
Notably, Perplexity — the startup out of Silicon Valley that’s reportedly now valued at about $9 billion — is being touted as enjoying a key position within the growth of the cellphone. That could be a sign of how the startup, greatest recognized in the present day for its generative AI search engine, is taking steps to create extra “proactive” merchandise.
“Perplexity is transitioning from simply being a solution machine to an motion machine,” Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s co-founder and CEO, stated on stage on the occasion. “It’ll begin doing issues for you, not simply answering questions. It’s going to have the ability to guide flights for you, guide reservations for you, ship emails for you, ship messages, place cellphone requires you, and all these kinds of issues, like set good reminders.”
Though this seems to be the primary time that Perplexity has inked a cope with a service to develop an AI interface for a smartphone, it has somewhat expertise in assistants already: Perplexity launched an Android assistant in January that looks like it might be a probable template for this new “AI Telephone”.
The information is the newest growth in a well-recognized story from the world of telecoms. For years, carriers — each cellular and glued — have pined for tactics to compete higher with expertise firms.
Particularly, they’ve centered on the likes of Apple and Google, which have created working techniques and telephones that largely lower telecom firms out of the equation relating to earning profits round apps, and “proudly owning” that buyer relationship. Over time, we’ve seen partnerships with Mozilla to create a carrier-first cellphone to compete with these two. (The Firephone, because it was referred to as, was not that sizzling in spite of everything.) And there have been many cozy years with Fb, because the social community too seemed for stronger footing of its personal within the cellular world. (Meta, because it’s now referred to as, is focusing its {hardware} and telecoms attentions elsewhere now.)
Shifting quick and breaking issues shouldn’t be part of the telecoms wheelhouse. Perplexity and Deutsche Telekom have been working collectively since inking a partnership in April 2024. And DT first talked about an “AI Telephone” a full yr in the past, ultimately yr’s Cell World Congress occasion.
Nemat didn’t get into many particulars of the {hardware}, like system specs, nor did she give info on who’s constructing it and what working system it’s going to run on (from the idea renderings, it seems to be like a taste of Android). We contacted DT immediately and a spokesperson stated these particulars can be disclosed within the second half of the yr.
Nemat did word that the cellphone may have AI baked in, with the expertise constructed by Perplexity “so as to expertise the total Monty,” she added: “AI in your lock display screen.”
Different companies on the cellphone will embrace AI from Google Cloud, ElevenLabs, and Picsart, DT stated.
Magenta AI, which might be an app-based model of DT’s AI assistant, might be accessible for individuals who wish to set up it on their very own Android or iOS units — so long as you might be already considered one of DT’s 300 million clients, Nemat stated.
Leaning into the present vogue for all issues AI — a pervasive theme at MWC this yr — the AI Telephone is DT’s newest try to achieve some stronger footing with shoppers round an anchoring piece of {hardware}, alongside the app for after they merely can’t get customers to purchase their very own system.
For Perplexity, the corporate competes with the likes of not simply the very-well-capitalised OpenAI and Anthropic relating to constructing new AI instruments for shoppers, but additionally huge tech firms like Google, which has baked its Gemini AI into its primary search merchandise. So shifting into “motion” companies, in partnership with a telco, provides it somewhat level of differentiation, no less than for now.
Right here, plainly Perplexity is leaning into the following section of how AI can enhance consumer expertise.
“These are the sorts of issues that, earlier, you would need to do in your individual approach, studying how you can use these completely different apps,” Srinivas stated. “All this stuff are going to start out turning into simpler so as to focus your time and vitality on problem-solving…. That is actually the following section the place AI [is] going to transition from being simply reactive and having you enter prompts into one thing that’s simply natively there in your cellphone, all the time listening to you and with the ability to […] proactively help you.”
It stays to be seen whether or not DT and Perplexity will be capable of crack the notoriously tough smartphone market, which is dominated by a small variety of firms and has over time seen even leviathans like LG money of their chips and again away.
It nonetheless factors to only how magnetic the AI pull is true now, how even legacy firms see it as a doable panacea, and the way even cutting-edge startups are on the lookout for protected moats amid fierce competitors.