The compatibility of digital devices with other apps is getting stronger and Samsung is getting ready to take advantage of the situation. The South Korean manufacturing giant has stated that from 2018, Bixby, its voice-powered personal assistant, will be a ‘ubiquitous’, ‘personalized’ and an ‘open’ digital assistant. Samsung debuted Bixby assistant on its flagship Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones earlier this year, and now, it is seriously working on Bixby’s compatibility with other OS platforms including Tizen so as to extend the usability of its personal assistant to home speakers, refrigerators, and televisions which will definitely give Bixby more fighting power against rivals such as Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri.
Ji Soo Yi, Vice-President, Mobile Communications Business, Samsung Electronics, said
“We are developing multiple technologies such as authentication technology, and wake up technology which will make a task such as even waking up Bixby easier…Samsung’s vision is to make the second iteration of Bixby a tool that becomes a daily part of everyone’s life by learning more about the user and deliver personalized results…We are aiming to lift the bar (in respect to digital assistants) as much as possible. Based on our current architecture, we are very confident that we have lifted the bar with Bixby 2.0.”
Just like the Tizen OS, Samsung is making its digital assistant open source which will enable developers to create software that will handle items like sports, food, entertainment, travel, and others. For now, we do not know when Bixby will become compatible with Tizen-based smartphones. Earlier this year, Bixby was launched in the US and several European countries. At the time of its launch, it had four main features which are the ability to understand voice command, for reminders, picture snapping/cataloging and receiving of recommendations. Subsequently, it was introduced in India and has been optimised to understand Indian accent. It will be awesome to see the further optimization of Bixby to support smart home devices.
