Mid-range gen AI smartphone shipments are expected to take off in 2026
According to a new International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast, global generative AI (gen AI) smartphone shipments are forecast to grow 363.6% year over year in 2024 to 234.2 million units, which represents 19% of the overall annual smartphone market. Further, by 2028, the firm forecasts 912 million gen AI smartphone shipments.
IDC defines gen AI smartphones as “devices that feature a system-on-a-chip (SoC) capable of running on-device GenAI models more quickly and efficiently leveraging a neural processing unit (NPU) with 30 tera operations per second (TOPS) or more performance using the int-8 data type.”
Anthony Scarsella, research director of mobile phones at IDC, noted that the arrival of such devices onto the market is “inevitable” and that the remarkable growth in 2024 will be followed by four consecutive years of double-digit growth.
In 2025, for instance, IDC predicts that shipments of gen AI smartphones will grow 73.1% year over year, followed by “moderate double-digit growth” for the rest of the forecast period. Scarsella did note that in the beginning, price will be a “critical inhibitor” as gen AI chipsets are expensive. “However, over time, we believe these components will enter the mid-market and more affordable models as competition grows among device manufacturers and AI applications,” he continued.
Nabila Popal, senior research director with IDC’s Worldwide Tracker Team, zeroed in on 2026, commenting that this year will prove the “most significant” as it is when mid-range devices are expected to adopt gen AI, making a “momentous leap towards the democratization” of this technology. “While it is still too early to know all the use cases that will emerge in the coming years, one thing is for sure, GenAI will completely transform the way we interact with our smartphones,” she said.
However, existing capabilities include advanced text, image and voice processing. For example, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra introduced an “AI Portrait” feature, which uses photos from a user’s gallery to train the smartphone on the user’s own face. The user can then generate AI selfies in almost any setting by entering a text prompt. The smartphone also has AI Expansion, a capability that allows users to add features to a photo to enlarge it.
Earlier this month, IDC reported that the second quarter of 2024 marked the fourth consecutive quarter of growth for the smartphone market overall, with global shipments up 6.5% since the same period last year. That translates to about 285.4 million units during the quarter. The analyst firm, however, warned that demand has yet to fully recover and “remains challenged in many markets.”
