It was inevitable that this 12 months at MWC in Barcelona, a minimum of one service would announce a serious effort at constructing a smartphone with a prime 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 12 months, and it’ll begin promoting it in 2026 for a price ticket of lower than $1,000. Initially, will probably be aimed on the European market, a spokesperson informed TechCrunch.
“We are becoming an AI company,” 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 giant language fashions, she was fast so as to add, “but we do the AI agents.”
Notably, Perplexity — the startup out of Silicon Valley that’s reportedly now valued at about $9 billion — is being touted as taking part in a key position within the growth of the cellphone. That could be a sign of how the startup, finest recognized in the present day for its generative AI search engine, is taking steps to create extra “proactive” merchandise.
“Perplexity is transitioning from just being an answer machine to an action machine,” Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s co-founder and CEO, stated on stage on the occasion. “It is going to start doing things for you, not just answering questions. It’s going to be able to book flights for you, book reservations for you, send emails for you, send messages, place phone calls for you, and all those sorts of things, like set smart reminders.”
Though this seems to be the primary time that Perplexity has inked a take care of a service to develop an AI interface for a smartphone, it has a little bit expertise in assistants already: Perplexity launched an Android assistant in January that looks as if it might be a possible template for this new “AI Phone”.
The information is the newest growth in a well-known story from the world of telecoms. For years, carriers — each cell and glued — have pined for tactics to compete higher with know-how corporations.
Particularly, they’ve targeted on the likes of Apple and Google, which have created working programs and telephones that largely reduce telecom corporations out of the equation on the subject of getting cash round apps, and “owning” that buyer relationship. Through the years, 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 regarded for stronger footing of its personal within the cell world. (Meta, because it’s now referred to as, is focusing its {hardware} and telecoms attentions elsewhere now.)
Transferring quick and breaking issues will not 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 Phone” a full 12 months in the past, finally 12 months’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 is going to run on (from the idea renderings, it appears to be like like a taste of Android). We contacted DT immediately and a spokesperson stated these particulars can be disclosed within the second half of the 12 months.
Nemat did notice that the cellphone may have AI baked in, with the expertise constructed by Perplexity “so that you can experience the full Monty,” she added: “AI on your lock screen.”
Different providers on the cellphone will embody AI from Google Cloud, ElevenLabs, and Picsart, DT stated.
Magenta AI, which will probably be an app-based model of DT’s AI assistant, will probably be obtainable for individuals who need to set up it on their very own Android or iOS units — so long as you’re already certainly one of DT’s 300 million prospects, Nemat stated.
Leaning into the present vogue for all issues AI — a pervasive theme at MWC this 12 months — the AI Cellphone is DT’s newest try to realize some stronger footing with customers round an anchoring piece of {hardware}, alongside the app for after they merely can not 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 on the subject of constructing new AI instruments for customers, but in addition huge tech corporations like Google, which has baked its Gemini AI into its primary search merchandise. So shifting into “action” providers, in partnership with a telco, offers it a little bit level of differentiation, a minimum of for now.
Right here, evidently Perplexity is leaning into the following part of how AI can enhance person expertise.
“These are the kinds of things that, earlier, you would have to do in your own way, learning how to use these different apps,” Srinivas stated. “All these things are going to start becoming easier so that you can focus your time and energy on problem-solving…. This is really the next phase where AI [is] going to transition from being just reactive and having you input prompts into something that’s just natively there on your phone, always listening to you and being able to […] proactively assist you.”
It stays to be seen whether or not DT and Perplexity will be capable of crack the notoriously difficult smartphone market, which is dominated by a small variety of corporations and has through the years seen even leviathans like LG money of their chips and again away.
It nonetheless factors to only how magnetic the AI pull is correct now, how even legacy corporations see it as a doable panacea, and the way even cutting-edge startups are searching for secure moats amid fierce competitors.
