Smartphone makers are dreaming of a 'supercycle' driven by AI. Analysts disagree

BARCELONA – Smartphone makers are talking a big game about artificial intelligence this year. 

And they're so confident about features they're cramming into their phones that they think it'll drive a new "supercycle" for the industry. 

Samsung, Google, and Chinese firm Honor are among the names that are beefing up their latest handsets with AI-powered features for translating and summarizing conversations and taking and editing photos with the power of generative AI algorithms. 

These are algorithms that are baked into the devices' chips themselves, rather than accessed via the cloud. 

Samsung has gone big on generative AI with its Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone. 

Google, too, has integrated AI directly into its latest Pixel phones. 

Apple, meanwhile, is also reportedly exploring the addition of on-device AI features to the next iPhone, per the Financial Times. 

This is all coming at a time when Mobile World Congress, the mobile technology industry's biggest trade show of the year, is kicking off. 

Major device makers like Samsung, Huawei, Honor, and Oppo, plus chip companies like Qualcomm and MediaTek, are expected to talk a big game about how much AI is transforming our personal devices. 

Smartphone makers have been dreaming of a "supercycle" in their industry, driven by AI, after a bruising few years that saw device sales slow aggressively. 

In 2023, smartphone sales fell to 1.16 billion units, the lowest point for unit shipments in a decade. 

The last "supercycle" in smartphones happened between 2010 and 2015, where in five years the market grew fivefold from roughly 300 million units sold per year to 1.5 billion units, according to IDC data. 

That came at a time when smartphones were just starting to become mainstream thanks to