Perplexity In Talks With Smartphone Makers To Pre-Install Comet Browser, Aiming To Boost Adoption Of Its AI Search Tool And Compete Directly With Google

Companies are increasingly looking for ways to establish themselves in the AI domain and offer capabilities and features either matched up to the competition or better to stand out for innovating when it comes to the technology. Perplexity AI is a Nvidia-backed start-up that is looking for ways now to build a strong foothold in the mobile market by partnering up with smartphone manufacturers. This is to compete with Google’s search engine by attempting to make its AI-powered search features more accessible to users. To do so, the company’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, is in talks with phone makers about having Comet, its browser, pre-installed on mobile devices.

Perplexity AI looks into pre-installing its Comet browser on smartphones in an attempt to challenge Google’s position

While Google’s position predominantly as the go-to search engine remains unbeaten, even when OpenAI and others are working on their own engines, the tech giant has established itself widely and firmly in the market. Perplexity AI, however, intends to challenge this with its new Comet browser. As per Yahoo Finance, CEO Aravind Srinivas is in talks with smartphone makers about having Comet pre-installed on their devices. By doing so, Srinivas aims to take advantage of browser stickiness, a concept where users tend to stick more to the browser that comes pre-installed. This would help the company gain traction by applying the same technique that Google relies on.

While talking about its plan and the ongoing efforts, Srinivas did not keep away from sharing the challenges faced in making companies opt for Comet instead of Chrome, especially given how long the search engine has been around. He further emphasized how user inertia, the tendency to rely on the pre-installed apps, makes this process even more formidable. He stated:

It’s not easy to convince mobile OEMs to change the default browser to Comet from Chrome.

While Comet is currently in its beta phase and is available on desktop, it seamlessly blends Perplexity AI into the web browsing experience. It allows users to interact with their personal data by asking questions or even giving commands. The browser can also summarize web pages for its users, set meetings on the user’s behalf, and become more of a personalized assistant. Comet aims to redefine how users interact with the web and streamline their everyday tasks.

Perplexity has an ambitious approach to Comet and plans to reach tens to hundreds of millions of users by next year. The AI startup is not the only one aiming to grow in the category, as we see a broader push industry-wide for agentic AI browsers, which require little human intervention for carrying out tasks.