Smartphones,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about smartphones — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Samsung owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Samsung is the default answer.
Named in 62% of smartphones answers, typically in position 1.9. Google follows at 50%, Apple at 45%.
Every brand AI names, ranked.
Visibility is the share of answers naming the brand; citation share is its slice of all brand-owned pages cited; read→cited is how often its pages convert a read into a citation.
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Samsung | 62% | 1.9 | 25% | 12% |
| 2 | 50% | 2.1 | 19% | 21% | |
| 3 | Apple | 45% | 2.3 | 28% | 19% |
| 4 | Xiaomi | 18% | 3.5 | 3% | 11% |
| 5 | OnePlus | 13% | 3.1 | 6% | 67% |
| 6 | Oppo | 8% | 2.8 | 6% | 20% |
| 7 | Honor | 7% | 4.5 | 3% | — |
| 8 | Motorola | 7% | 4.5 | 0% | — |
| 9 | Ulefone | 5% | 1.7 | 3% | 100% |
| 10 | Nothing | 5% | 4.0 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Vivo | 5% | 4.0 | 0% | 0% |
| 12 | Doogee | 3% | 2.5 | 3% | 50% |
| 13 | Crosscall | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Nokia | 2% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Oukitel | 2% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
Samsung is named most. That is not the same as being wanted.
Being named is visibility. Underneath it, every answer describes a brand in three ways — how much it stands out, how much it belongs, and how much it is returned to. In smartphones, Apple leads attraction at 125 against TCL at 80, indexed on the category at 100.
Each whorl lights one ring per index threshold cleared. See the full smartphones desire edition →
Before it answers, it goes looking for Google.
An assistant does not answer from memory alone. It runs its own web searches first, and whoever it searches for is the shortlist it then chooses from. Across 66 searches in smartphones, Google is named in 32% of the ones that name a brand at all. ChatGPT Web does not report its searches, so these shares are measured against the ones that do.
These are the assistants' own searches, read from their answers — not what anyone typed into a search engine.
The referees of smartphones.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering smartphones questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
OnePlus converts reads into citations. Xiaomi doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? OnePlus converts 67% of reads; Xiaomi just 11%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Samsung | 62% | 1.9 | 25% | 12% |
| 2 | 50% | 2.1 | 19% | 21% | |
| 3 | Apple | 45% | 2.3 | 28% | 19% |
| 4 | Xiaomi | 18% | 3.5 | 3% | 11% |
| 5 | OnePlus | 13% | 3.1 | 6% | 67% |
| 6 | Oppo | 8% | 2.8 | 6% | 20% |
| 7 | Honor | 7% | 4.5 | 3% | — |
| 8 | Motorola | 7% | 4.5 | 0% | — |
| 9 | Ulefone | 5% | 1.7 | 3% | 100% |
| 10 | Nothing | 5% | 4.0 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Vivo | 5% | 4.0 | 0% | 0% |
| 12 | Doogee | 3% | 2.5 | 3% | 50% |
| 13 | Crosscall | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Nokia | 2% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Oukitel | 2% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
All three models agree: Samsung.
A rare consensus — every model puts Samsung first, and their top-five lists overlap 100%. Winning here means winning everywhere at once.
Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.
The data behind this chart
| Brand | Claude | Gemini | ChatGPT | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung | 45% | 85% | 55% | 40pp |
| Apple | 25% | 60% | 50% | 35pp |
| 40% | 65% | 45% | 25pp | |
| Xiaomi | 15% | 30% | 10% | 20pp |
| Motorola | 0% | 20% | 0% | 20pp |
| Nothing | 0% | 15% | 0% | 15pp |
| OnePlus | 10% | 20% | 10% | 10pp |
| Honor | 10% | 10% | 0% | 10pp |
| Vivo | 5% | 10% | 0% | 10pp |
| Sony | 5% | 0% | 0% | 5pp |
Comparisons carry smartphones.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. Comparisons supply the most citations; How-to guides convert best — 98% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comparisons | 82 | 20 | 80% |
| Editorial | 63 | 21 | 75% |
| How-to guides | 49 | 1 | 98% |
| Listicles | 33 | 10 | 77% |
| Community threads | 31 | 8 | 79% |
| Reviews | 20 | 9 | 69% |
| Product pages | 16 | 8 | 67% |
| Other | 13 | 23 | 36% |
Named author is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the smartphones pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Named author is worth 2 percentage points; cites its sources pages fare 50pp worse. Measured within the read population, so selection can't flatter it.
The data behind this chart
| Feature | Pages with | Cited % | Pages without | Cited % | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Named author | 272 | 72% | 224 | 70% | +2pp |
| Structured data | 211 | 72% | 285 | 70% | +2pp |
| Specifications | 202 | 71% | 294 | 71% | -0pp |
| Answer up front | 224 | 67% | 272 | 74% | -6pp |
| Hard statistics | 240 | 66% | 256 | 75% | -9pp |
| Updated this year | 232 | 65% | 264 | 77% | -12pp |
| Comparison table | 162 | 61% | 334 | 76% | -15pp |
| Cites its sources | 47 | 26% | 449 | 76% | -50pp |
Oppo builds pages AI can quote.
Readiness scores each brand's own pages on the structure models reward — a direct answer up front, tables, hard numbers, named authors, structured data, recency, specifications. Apple is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oppo | 38 | 67% | 3 |
| Honor | 38 | 18% | 11 |
| Doogee | 38 | 50% | 4 |
| Samsung | 32 | 25% | 63 |
| Apple | 32 | 10% | 158 |
| Xiaomi | 30 | 20% | 10 |
| OnePlus | 25 | 43% | 7 |
| Nokia | 13 | 33% | 3 |
| 8 | 23% | 39 |
Readiness is the share of eight measurable structural signals present on a brand's profiled pages. It is a build-quality measure, not a ranking of the brand.
The questions smartphones pages have to settle.
Read straight off the pages AI cited: the consumer questions cited content answers most often. Content that fails to settle these is content models have no reason to quote.
Nineteen more categories.
Method: 20 unbranded consumer prompts per category, spread across the buying journey, run weekly against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Read→cited uses Claude and ChatGPT only (Gemini does not separate the two). Correlational observations of model behaviour at the time of the run. Data from the run completed Tue, 08 Sep 2026 06:35:23 GMT.