In San Francisco, on March 6, Samsung Electronics' India-based research and development centers in Bengaluru and Noida played a crucial role in developing its latest flagship Samsung Galaxy S26 series smartphones, according to a company official.
These centers contributed significantly to the development of the devices, highlighting the growing importance of Samsung's India R&D operations in the company's global product engineering and innovation efforts, said JB Park, President and CEO of Samsung Southwest Asia.
Furthermore, Samsung is optimistic about the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in smartphones and other devices in India, driven by its younger demographic.
"India has the largest youth population in the world, with 65% of the people under 35 years of age. The everyday use of AI by Indian consumers is among the highest in the world. This is not surprising because Indian consumers are very receptive to new technology," Park said.
Earlier this year, Samsung CEO and Head of Device eXperience (DX) Division, T M Roh, announced its ambitious plans to double the number of its AI-powered mobile devices to 800 million by 2026, up from approximately 400 million in 2025.
India is a strategic market for Samsung Electronics, contributing 10% of global revenue.
"Besides Korea, I think the Noida R&D center is the primary place that does configurations for all the localized global settings. From collaborating with the telcos for setting up the frequency to the product settings, all are being done in Noida. Again, Bengaluru is playing the pivotal role in the AI algorithm for our on-device AI," Park said.
Samsung employs over 10,000 engineers across its three R&D centers in India. Its R&D center in Bengaluru is its largest outside Korea. Samsung engineers working out of India contribute to local and global product innovations, Park added.
When asked about Indian R&D centers’ contribution in developing the S26 series, he said: "India played an important part. It has a pivotal role in that part of it."
Park said hardware development for new devices is carried out by Samsung's affiliates.
For example, "Hardware is developed by our affiliates like Samsung Display Corporation, which makes the panel. The memory and the chipset come from LSI, which is also an affiliate of Samsung Electronics Group.
"These are the fundamental developments happening in our R&D center in Korea. But you have to calibrate the device and the components to work seamlessly. Calibration is an art of engineering. And that happens in India," he said.
Samsung has a group of engineers at Bengaluru R&D centre which is focused on making our third-party or in-house components work on components-to-components integration.
"We call it engineering, not the hardware or component development, but engineering. That's where India is really, really brilliant at doing that kind of R&D, which is very important. There are components that are being conflicted in some of the operating systems that we use, such as Android. And integrating that into a component and making it the best output is engineering that we call it, what we are good at in India," he said.
The Bengaluru R&D centre is playing the "pivotal role in the AI algorithm on our on-device AI". This functionality, especially focusing on the camera, and they are now "specialised" in it.
About its Noida-based R&D centre, he said, it is doing the specific job of coding for market-based requirements for "maybe 129 countries".
"So, besides Korea engineering, I think the Noida R&D centre is the primary place that does configuration for all the localised global settings. "From collaborating with the telcos for setting up the frequency to the product settings, all are being done in Noida. So, I can say that the projects in Noida are very important. We just make the fundamental structure of the S-series, the A-series, or the foldables in Korea. But you will see a lot of value added that is done in Noida," he said.
On the smartphone market trend in India, Park said it "is migrating into a premium segment."
Replying to a query on AI adoption in the Indian market, Park said it will take some time to universalise this technology, and Samsung is educating customers about the benefits of the AI ecosystem.
".... But not 100 per cent of Indian consumers understand it yet. So, it's our job to do more communications to the market and educate the consumers about the true value that they will get out of Samsung's AI ecosystem," he said
According to an IDC report, Samsung had 14.1 per cent market share in the Indian smartphone market in 2025, where it competes with Cupertino-headquartered Apple and some Chinese companies, which lead the overall market.
In the super-premium segment, which is USD 800 and above, Apple maintained leadership with a 63 per cent share, while Samsung's share was 34 per cent.
