Seoul, July 29 : About half of smartphones sold globally this year will have an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered assistant, a report by an industry consulting firm showed Sunday.

According to Strategy Analytics (SA) Inc., 47.7 per cent of smartphones sold on the global market will be equipped with some kind of on-device AI assistant, up from 36.6 per cent last year, Yonhap news agency reported.

On-device AI is growing fast among smartphone vendors and by 2023, around 90 per cent of smartphones will have a built-in AI assistant, according to the Strategy Analytics report.

In 2017, Google Assistant rose to be the top AI assistant with a 46.7 per cent market share, followed by Apple's Siri with 40.1 per cent, it said.

The report said the market share of Google's AI assistant is expected to climb to 51.3 per cent this year and 60.6 per cent by 2023.

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New Delhi, Oct 24: The sports ministry on Thursday announced the discontinuation of the Dhyan Chand Award for lifetime achievement from this year onwards and the introduction of the Arjuna Award Lifetime in its place in a bid to "rationalise" the various sporting honours of the country.

Instituted in 2002, the Dhyan Chand Lifetime Award, named after hockey wizard Major Dhyan Chand, is given to individuals in disciplines that are part of the Olympic Games, Paralympic Games, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games, among others.

In 2023, the award was given to former shuttler Manjusha Kanwar, ex-hockey exponent Vineet Kumar and kabaddi player Kavitha Selvaraj.

"The various schemes for sports awards have been rationalised wherein Arjuna Award (Lifetime) has been introduced in place of Dhyan Chand Award. To recognise the efforts of coaches at grassroots/development level, they are now eligible for the Dronacharya Award," said a ministry statement.

"The Arjuna Award (Lifetime) has been introduced and will be given for life time contribution to sports development.

"Further, to recognize the Khelo India scheme, the Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad (MAKA) Trophy will be given to the University for Overall Top Performance in Khelo India University Games," it added.

The last date for applying for the national sports awards for 2024 is November 14.