Not to be left out of the slew of digital assistants, Samsung last year threw its hat into the ring with its solution, Bixby. While it was originally planned to ship with the release of its Galaxy S8 and S8+ flagship handsets, that only held true for Korean users with the feature being delayed in the US market until its eventual release in July. Since then, the feature really hasn"t enamored itself with users, some of whom have preferred to remap the dedicated Bixby button despite a minor cat-and-mouse game with Samsung.
Now, it appears that a major revision to Samsung"s assistant is on track for release later this year, according to comments made by Co-CEO Koh Dong-jin at a press conference at this year"s Mobile World Conference in Barcelona. Specifically, Koh said:
"Considering the current speed (of development), the (sic) Bixby 2.0 can be showcased through the Galaxy Note 9. The (sic) Bixby 2.0 will allow users to experience a wider scope of voice-assistance features."
Of course, this is not entirely unexpected given the release of the Bixby 2.0 SDK late last year with the firm positioning it as a "powerful intelligent assistant platform that will bring a connected experience that is ubiquitous, personal, and open". At this stage, the upcoming version is currently being beta tested by around 800 partners. Further to this, Samsung software and AI head Chung Eui-suk mentioned that work is underway to enable its assistant to recognize individual voices, eventually paving the way for multiple users to independently interact with Bixby-enabled devices.
Ultimately, it remains to be seen if Bixby"s second iteration will be enough to carve out a sizeable chunk of the market given the popularity of solutions particularly from the likes of Amazon and Google.
Source: Yonhap News via SamMobile