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It was inevitable that this year at MWC in Barcelona , at least one carrier would herald a major effort at build a smartphone with a top AI company . And here it is : Deutsche Telekom ( DT ) , said that it is building an “ AI Phone , ” a grim - cost French telephone created in cheeseparing collaboration with Perplexity , along with Picsart and others , plus a new AI assistant app it ’s call “ Magenta AI . ”
DT will bring out the gadget in the 2d half of this year , and it will start sell it in 2026 for a price tag of less than $ 1,000 . Initially , it will be train at the European market , a spokesperson told TechCrunch .
“ We are becoming an AI company , ” Claudia Nemat , a DT control board phallus who oversees tech and innovation at the telecom , said during a press conference Monday . It ’s not work up foundational large language modelling , she was quick to add , “ but we do the AI agents . ”
Notably , Perplexity — the startup out of Silicon Valley that isreportedlynow valued at about $ 9 billion — is being touted as flirt a key function in the development of the phone . That is a signal of how the inauguration , best known today for its generative AI lookup railway locomotive , is taking dance step to create more “ proactive ” products .
“ Perplexity is transition from just being an answer machine to an action mechanism machine , ” Aravind Srinivas , Perplexity ’s Centennial State - founder and CEO , said onstage at the effect . “ It is go to start doing things for you , not just answering question . It ’s kick the bucket to be able to book flights for you , book reserve for you , send e-mail for you , send messages , place phone birdcall for you , and all those sorts of thing , like set smart reminder . ”
Although this seem to be the first time that Perplexity has inked a deal with a carrier wave to develop an AI interface for a smartphone , it has a little experience in help already : Perplexitylaunched an Android assistant in Januarythat seems like it could be a probable template for this new “ AI Phone . ”
The news is the latest maturation in a intimate story from the earth of telecom . For years , carriers — both fluid and fixed — have pined for ways to compete well with technology ship’s company .
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Specifically , they have focalize on the like of Apple and Google , which have created operating system and phones that mostly cut telecom companies out of the equation when it comes to hit money around apps , and “ owning ” that customer human relationship . Over the years , we ’ve seenpartnerships with Mozillato create a carrier - first telephone to compete with these two . ( The Firephone , as it was call , wasnot that hot after all . ) And there weremany cozy years with Facebook , as the social net too looked for stronger foothold of its own in the mobile mankind . ( Meta , as it ’s now called , is concentrate itshardwareandtelecomsattentions elsewhere now . )
Moving tight and break things is not a part of the telecoms wheelhouse . Perplexity and Deutsche Telekom have been working together since inking a partnership inApril 2024 . And DT first blab about an “ AI Phone ” a full year ago , at last year ’s Mobile World Congress event .
Nemat did not get into many details of the hardware , like machine specifications , nor did she give information on who is building it and what operating system it will run on ( from the concept rendering , it looks like a relish of Android ) . We meet DT directly and a representative sound out these details would be disclosed in the 2d one-half of the year .
Nemat did take down that the phone will have AI broil in , with the experience built by Perplexity “ so that you could receive the full Monty , ” she add together : “ AI on your curl blind . ”
Other service on the phone will include AI from Google Cloud , ElevenLabs , and Picsart , DT said .
Magenta AI , which will be an app - based version of DT ’s AI assistant , will be available for those who want to put in it on their own Android or iOS devices — as long as you are already one of DT ’s 300 million customers , Nemat said .
Leaning into the current style for all thing AI — a pervasive theme at MWC this year — the AI Phone is DT ’s in vogue attempt to gain some stronger foothold with consumers around an anchoring musical composition of hardware , alongside the app for when they plainly can not get users to buy their own machine .
For Perplexity , the caller vie with the likes of not just the very - well - capitalized OpenAI and Anthropic when it comes to building new AI shaft for consumers , but also big tech companies like Google , which has bake its Gemini AI into its basic lookup product . So strike into “ action ” military service , in partnership with a telco , give it a small point of differentiation , at least for now .
Here , it seems that Perplexity is leaning into the next phase of how AI can improve user experience .
“ These are the sort of thing that , in the first place , you would have to do in your own room , learning how to use these unlike apps , ” Srinivas said . “ All these thing are perish to start becoming gentle so that you’re able to focus your time and muscularity on problem - resolution … . 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 telephone set , always hear to you and being capable to [ … ] proactively wait on you . ”
It remain to be seen whether DT and Perplexity will be able-bodied to collapse the notoriously wily smartphone grocery , which is dominated by a small number of companies and has over the years go out even leviathans like LG hard cash in their chips and back away .
It nevertheless manoeuvre to just how magnetic the AI wrench is right now , how even legacy companies see it as a potential catholicon , and how even reduce - edge startups are expect for safe moat amid fierce challenger .
