Forget the foldable phones. Samsung's Bixby assistant is about to become smarter

The Samsung Bixby Digital Assistant boasts an extra capacity, but the question is whether it's too late.

The South Korean company will open its two-day developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, an annual event that reflects the company's extensive efforts to encourage developers to create software specifically for its peripherals. Previously, this meant creating apps running at the edge of curved curved Samsung smartphone screens or taking advantage of its S Pen stylus. This year, the focus is on Bixby and artificial intelligence.

While the prospect of a foldable smartphone – The long rumor about the Galaxy F – could catch the eye on the speech of 10 am Samsung is rather a taste of what will happen. The presentation will focus on the present: how to make Bixby smarter. The consumer electronics giant could share more information about the system powered by Bixby Galaxy Home smart speaker he unveiled in August, including his date of sale.

Samsung plans to let all third-party developers access Bixby, according to The Wall Street Journal. Soon, companies will be able to make "capsules", similar to the skills of Amazon Alexa, to order, for example, meals with the help of a voice command, the newspaper said. .

This decision would fulfill a wish that Samsung had made when launching Bixby on the Galaxy S8 in early 2017 and when presenting the 2.0 version of artificial intelligence technology later in the year: open Bixby to third-party applications. The goal is to help Bixby compete with Alexa, Amazon, Apple, Siri and Google Assistant, at a time when digital badistants are raging, allowing you to call an Uber carousel or control your smart home with your voice.

For Samsung and many others, artificial intelligence is the next big wave of computing. All technology heavyweights invest in these badistants because they are presented as the future of how we will interact with our gadgets. The ultimate promise for smart technology is to predict what you want before you even ask, but in most cases, PDAs are not smart enough yet.

The problem for Samsung is that it could be too late.

"They are really far behind," said Jack Narcotta, Analyst at Strategy Analytics. "They could be far enough behind, they might not be able to catch up effectively with any of the market leaders."

According to a poll by Voicebox.AI, only 4% of American adults who use voice badistants on a smartphone use Bixby. This compares to 44% for Siri, 30% for Google Assistant and 17% for Alexa.

In addition, Amazon devices account for 63 percent of the US smart speaker market, with Echo and Echo Dot products at the top of the pack, according to a report released in October by Strategy Analytics. Google has claimed 17%, with Home and Home Mini in the following two places.

Samsung declined to comment before the developer conference.

A brilliant acolyte

Samsung has been developing software and service capabilities over the last decade, but has had more failures than successes. His services were launched – including Bixby's predecessor, S Voice – only to be abandoned a few months or years later. Instead of using its local Tizen operating system in its high end smartphones, Samsung has relegated the software to wearables and other products and continues to rely on Android software. Google to power its smartphones and tablets.

While Bixby has its own dedicated button on the side of Galaxy smartphones, Samsung device users can still access the Google Assistant via the Home key. Given the option between Google Assistant and Bixby, many users are opting for Google, according to badysts.

"Most people are starting to use digital badistants for difficult tasks, such as research," said Carolina Milanesi, an badyst at Creative Strategies. Because that is not why Bixby was built, the results are often disappointing "so that people never come back".

She added that it would be difficult for users to abandon the Google Assistant on a phone, unless Samsung makes the technology difficult to access. "But I would not advise them to do it," she said, "unless [Bixby] is incredibly better. "

When Bixby was launched more than a year ago, the technology aimed to act as an "enlightened companion" on smartphones, allowing users to easily and quickly make things like taking a snapshot. screen or find a picture and send it to a friend. It was a new interface, not a full digital badistant, able to tell you how high Abraham Lincoln or the capital of Kansas was.

An image recognition component, called Bixby Vision, could identify landmarks, types of wine, products and text to translate. Bixby would tell you what the items were and, in the US, would send you to Amazon to buy them.

At first, Bixby worked with just 10 preloaded Samsung apps. From the beginning, Samsung has announced its intention to let third-party application developers take advantage of Bixby. That's partly why she bought start-up AI Viv Vivs and Joyent, a cloud computing company, in 2016.

Viv was destined to handle daily tasks, such as ordering flowers, booking hotel rooms and finding weather conditions, in response to natural language commands. The creators – including one of Siri's creators, Dag Kittlaus – claim that their software understands your requests and engages in a conversation with you to satisfy them, instead of making you talk about formatted commands, as do other badistants IA.

The initial version of Bixby used only the technology created by Samsung internally. But Bixby 2.0, which Samsung unveiled at its developer conference last year, has incorporated Viv's predictive technology. Launched on the Galaxy Note 9 in August, Bixby 2.0 is smarter than its first version, says Samsung, with deep link capabilities and enhanced natural language capabilities. It is designed to better recognize individual users and better predict the needs of users.

Over the last year, Samsung has also collaborated with preferred partners on Bixby-based applications, its first step before opening its SDC 2018 software development kit more widely. And Bixby has made its way to the next generation. new Samsung Galaxy Watch 2018 TV and Family Hub refrigerator.

Gradually, Bixby became more than a smart sidekick.

"Now, it's not enough to be different [user interface] badistant, "said Milanesi. It 's about being a full – fledged badistant. "

A smart future

If Bixby's capabilities are being developed by Samsung, it would be best to focus on specific uses rather than everyone else, badysts said. This could mean targeting the auto sector through its Harman business, which is a key supplier of the automobile. According to IHS Markit badyst Blake Kozak, he could also focus on devices, languages ​​or other areas where he has an edge over his competitors.

"Samsung is probably too late in the market to compete with the infrastructure and scale of Google and Amazon," he said. "Instead of [it] should become a specialist, or at least the de facto standard for Samsung devices. "

Samsung also needs to create several versions of its Galaxy Home speaker, according to badysts. Its first version may be expensive, but the company should also offer versions of less than $ 40 – cheap enough to compete with Amazon Echo Dot and Google Home.

Even though he may be late, Samsung is not giving up on Bixby. In the past year, seven artificial intelligence research centers have been opened around the world, including the United States, South Korea and Russia, to make their digital badistant more intelligent. It plans to employ 1,000 artificial intelligence specialists by 2020 – the same amount of time it takes for all of its products to be connected to the Internet and integrated with Bixby.

"We are an appliance company," said Kim Hyun-suk, CEO of Samsung Consumer Electronics in May. "The rules of the game are different – it's not fair to see it as a matter of being ahead or late."

Overall, Samsung "aims to develop a highly personalized, multi-service platform that allows people to achieve more in their lives," said the group in a press release announcing the creation of a new global communications center. IA in October.

Now, it only remains to be hoped that developers – and users – will commit.

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