The use of Generative Artificial Intelligence is increasingly moving to smartphone, with spending on the tool on those devices tipped to approach $300 billion by the end of this year.
Gartner Senior Director Analyst Ranjit Atwal said new data showed that represented 20 percent of total AI end-user spending in 2025.
“Currently, most (smartphone) users still rely on text or touch for all tasks, and voice interactions remain limited in scope,” Mr Atwal said.
“However, as conversational AI becomes more natural in the future, users are expected to become more comfortable with AI as a proactive digital companion, rather than just a reactive tool.”
He said with all mobile vendors increasingly integrating on-device GenAI models and applications, end-user spending on GenAI smartphones was expected to total $393.3 billion in 2026, an increase of 32 percent from 2025.
“The broad use of new NPUs (neural processing units) in smartphones will allow GenAI models to run faster and more efficiently, requiring users to upgrade to the latest smartphone hardware for optimised experiences.
“In 2025, Gartner forecasts almost all premium GenAI smartphones will include NPUs and 41 percent of basic GenAI smartphones will have NPUs.”
Mr Atwal said by 2027, Gartner expected on-device NPUs performance levels exceeding 40 tera operations per second (TOPS) would become standard in premium GenAI smartphones.
He said that would enable real-time execution of complex multimodal AI workloads without excessive power consumption.
