Digital鈥檚 rapid adoption in recent years has made it the dominant medium with which people spend time in China, Japan, and South Korea, with consumption booming in India.
The news: Samsung leaned heavily on AI functionality at its Unpacked event Wednesday with the Galaxy S25 series, Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 smartphones and Galaxy Watch 8, all featuring enhanced AI capabilities as a core value proposition, per Android Central.
Samsung highlighted proprietary Galaxy AI for tasks like on-device photo and video editing, but the bigger news was Samsung鈥檚 adoption of Google Gemini across its ecosystem.
Our take: For advertisers, the shift toward screen-aware, voice-activated experiences requires them to rethink how brands and campaigns align in an AI-first mobile world. Reframing brand experiences around mobile, voice, and contextual AI features opens opportunities for user engagement.
The news: Fortnite-maker Epic Games settled its antitrust lawsuit against Samsung, ending claims that Samsung and Google blocked rival app stores, per Bloomberg.
Epic had accused Samsung鈥檚 鈥淎uto Blocker鈥� of preventing third-party app store downloads, alleging collusion with Google. Samsung and Google previously denied wrongdoing, calling Epic鈥檚 claims 鈥渂aseless鈥� and 鈥渕eritless.鈥�
Our take: With Epic鈥檚 continued disruption of app store ecosystems, marketers should prepare for a fragmented but freer market鈥攁lternative app stores allow more control over promotions, subscriptions, and bundled offerings.