Overview Leaderboard Methodology
Industry Report

Budget Smartphones

Affordable smartphones that prioritize value with lower-cost components while delivering essential features and adequate performance.

Brands tracked: 33
Brands analyzed: 33
Last updated: 2026-04-22
Model: OpenAI GPT-5
Prompts: 263
Total responses: 1,330
Top Brand Overall?
Samsung
94/100

Highest overall AI Visibility Score in this industry.

LBA Leader?
Samsung
95

Highest score on the LBA metric in this industry.

Authority Leader?
Google
87

Highest score on the Authority metric in this industry.

TOM Leader?
Samsung
100

Highest score on the TOM metric in this industry.

Samsung is the default answer in AI responses for Budget Smartphones

Samsung and Google together dominate AI responses for Budget Smartphones. Both brands consistently surface unprompted, with the model treating them as the default answers for most category queries. Brands outside the top two face a structural disadvantage: users are usually given these two before the model even considers alternatives.

Brand Leaderboard All 33 Budget Smartphones brands ranked

Ranked by overall AI Visibility Score (smoothed geometric mean of LBA, Authority, and TOM with an LBA-based floor on Authority and TOM, see methodology). Click any brand for the full report.

# Brand LBA Authority TOM Overall
1
Samsung
samsung.com
 95
86
100
94
2
Google
google.com
 71
87
100
85
3
Motorola
motorola.com
 65
58
82
68
4
OnePlus
oneplus.com
 78
31
83
59
5
vivo
vivo.com
 81
8
8
20
6
HONOR
honor.com
 72
7
7
18
7
Infinix
infinixmobility.com
 75
7
7
18
8
OPPO
oppo.com
 73
7
7
18
9
realme
realme.com
 74
7
7
18
10
Redmi
mi.com
 72
7
7
18
11
Tecno
tecno-mobile.com
 73
7
7
18
12
Nokia
nokia.com
 69
7
7
17
13
POCO
po.co
 68
7
7
17
14
TCL
tcl.com
 68
7
7
17
15
Lava
lava.in
 65
6
6
16
16
itel
itel-life.com
 62
6
6
15
17
Blackview
blackview.hk
 55
5
5
14
18
Micromax
micromaxinfo.com
 57
6
6
14
19
Symphony
symphony.com
 54
5
5
14
20
Ulefone
ulefone.com
 55
5
5
14
21
ZTE
zte.com.cn
 56
6
6
14
22
Alcatel
alcatelmobile.com
 51
5
5
13
23
Oukitel
oukitel.com
 53
5
5
13
24
QMobile
qmobile.com.pk
 52
5
5
13
25
BLU
bluproducts.com
 46
5
5
12
26
DOOGEE
doogee.cc
 48
5
5
12
27
G
Gionee
gionee.com
 47
5
5
12
28
UMIDIGI
umidigi.com
 45
5
5
12
29
Walton
waltonbd.com
 47
5
5
12
30
Wiko
wiko.com
 45
4
4
12
31
Cubot
cubot.net
 43
4
4
11
32
General Mobile
generalmobile.com
 41
4
4
11
33
Allview
allview.ro
 32
3
3
9

How is this calculated? Methodology

Every brand in this leaderboard is scored against the same set of 263 shared Budget Smartphones prompts. The same prompts, same model, same iterations. So differences in scores reflect actual differences in AI visibility, not differences in measurement.

Overall AI Visibility Score
Smoothed geometric mean of LBA, Authority and TOM. Authority and TOM are floored at LBA × 0.1 before the geometric mean (the same floor used in the per-metric cards above, so brand cards and the composite tell the same story). Formula: composite = ((LBA + 5)(Authority + 5)(TOM + 5))^(1/3) - 5. The floor keeps brands the model clearly recognises but doesn't yet recommend from collapsing to zero, while a single genuinely weak metric still pulls the composite down. Full methodology.
Shared industry prompts
For Authority and TOM, all brands in the industry are scored against the same 263 category prompts (e.g. "best SEO tools for agencies"). This makes brand-to-brand comparisons valid - everyone faces identical inputs. LBA prompts are per-brand because they ask brand-specific questions.
Latent Brand Association (LBA)
5 brand probes + 1 control prompt, each run 5 times in recall mode (no web search). LBA = quality × meta × stability × share × recognition × 100. Read the full LBA methodology →
LLM Authority
50 organic category prompts (discovery, comparison, problem and transactional intents), each run once in recall mode and once in retrieval mode. Score = frequency × log-decayed prominence × intent weight, then 50/50 averaged across the two modes. Read the full Authority methodology →
Top of Mind (TOM)
15 high-volume discovery prompts (sourced from Keywords Everywhere search-volume data), each run 5 times in pure recall mode (no web). Score = frequency × (0.5 + 0.5 × log-prominence), volume-weighted. Read the full TOM methodology →