AI and 5G in focus at top mobile fair

Paris: Phone makers will seek to entice new buyers with better cameras and bigger screens at the world´s biggest mobile fair starting Monday in Spain after a year of flat smartphone sales.

But with no major innovations awaited in handsets, analysts expect the four-day Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to focus on new uses for artificial intelligence (AI) and the looming deployment of super-fast 5G wireless networks.

Smartphone giants Huawei, LG or HTC are not expected to launch a new flagship device at the annual show, so Samsung will have the opportunity to grab the spotlight when it unveils its S9 and S9+ phones on Sunday on the eve of the fair.

The teasers suggest major changes to the camera, which will reportedly allow for "super slow-motion" videos and a new camera lens that improves low-light photos: features some of its rivals already offer. The camera "seems to have become a major source of differentiation for the latest generation of smartphones," said mobile phone analyst Ben Wood of CCS Insight.

Samsung suffered a humiliating recall of its Galaxy Note 7 device in 2016 after several devices exploded but its Galaxy 8 smartphone was a consumer and critical success.

The company remained the world´s biggest seller of smartphones in 2017 with a 21.6 percent market share, up from 21.1 percent in the previous year, according to research firm IDC.

Apple, which as usual will not be present at the show, was the second biggest vendor at 14.7 percent. Overall global smartphone sales for 2017 were virtually flat -- down 0.1 percent at 1.47 billion units -- as phone makers struggled to come up with innovations that encourage customers to upgrade their devices.