Samsung is likely to expand its Galaxy AI subscription club to its flagship Galaxy phones in South Korea next month, according to ET News. The two words to pay particular attention to in this sentence are maybe And Korea.
The Galaxy AI Subscription Club already has a strong presence in Samsung’s home country for its range of smart devices. The service launched in December to a very positive consumer response, with subscription sales already accounting for 30% of purchases in Samsung stores. South Koreans love Samsung and its software and are willing to buy it.
In the United States, people are not as enthusiastic.
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That’s why you may have seen news about Samsung’s “phone subscription” in the news this week. Thanks to some rather questionable articles on the subject, people have assumed that Samsung is introducing some kind of subscription pricing to use the phones we’re going to see at Galaxy Unpacked.
To be very clear, we are not. It is only for special AI services, even if they come to the United States, I hate that we call it a phone subscription because it’s not; it’s a software subscription that’s no different than what Adobe or Norton offer for your PC. Phone stuff is weird sometimes.
Enough about what the AI Club is and how it could grow. Let’s talk about the reaction. Why do people hate it when Samsung does the exact same thing that Apple and Google already do, for the same type of service?
If you’re using a new iPhone, you can use Apple Intelligence features for free until 2027, but to get the most out of it, you can connect it to a paid ChatGPT subscription that costs $20 per month.
If you use an Android phone in some countries, you can use Google Gemini for free. To get the most out of Gemini, you can subscribe to a Google One plan including Gemini Advanced, which costs $20 per month.
Samsung has already said that all Galaxy AI features will be free for phone and tablet users until at least the end of 2025. could include an AI subscription tier in South Korea.
If it’s OK for Apple and Google, it should be OK for Samsung.
Judging by the reaction of Internet technology prosumers, it is clearly not acceptable for Samsung to do this. This is due to how we perceive Samsung in the West.
When you think of Samsung, you probably think of phones and the parts used to make phones. Samsung is well known as an electronics manufacturer and almost all phones contain Samsung parts. Even an iPhone.
Samsung is also very good at this. Consumers aren’t upset about the performance of a Samsung display on a Pixel 9 or iPhone 16. Samsung’s memory and controllers are excellent and part of what makes your flagship phone so fast. The company’s phones and tablets are no slouch either, and a Galaxy S24 Ultra is one of the best you can buy.
When it comes to software, there isn’t the same enthusiasm. The company seems to have finally built a great version of Android with recent versions of One UI, but most tech enthusiasts don’t use Samsung’s phone software much, if at all.
Samsung’s apps are like the Stocks app on an iPhone and end up in a junk folder if they can’t be disabled. Bixby (which isn’t really that bad) is the laughing stock of Android enthusiasts, and what Samsung did to Tizen should send some people straight to Dante’s Inferno.
That’s what American tech enthusiasts think about Samsung’s software. You don’t have to look very hard to find people saying they wish they could buy a Galaxy S24 Ultra that runs the Pixel version of Google’s Android, and plenty of people are trying to hack exactly that onto their expensive phones. Most consumers don’t know any better or don’t care and just use what’s there, but the die-hard techies are the ones who speak out on the internet about everything.
I would never pay for an AI subscription, at least until it offers more than a different way of providing me with already available information. When this happens, I don’t care if Samsung, Apple, or Google offers it: I’ll buy what best suits my needs.
More than likely we won’t have to worry about it at all here in North America and this was just a convenient excuse to complain about Samsung and AI in general.
