Samsung to open up Bixby for third-party development to compete against other digital assistants

Samsung is doing the best it can to make Bixby, its digital assistant more popular. Despite pre-installing the assistant on its smartphones and other devices, hardly anyone is seen using it. Samsung thinks this could be because the assistant is not as versatile as Amazon Alexa or the Google Assistant. As a result, the company is planning to open up the platform for third-party development. According to a report from Wall Street Journal, the South Korean giant is slated to make the announcement at the Samsung Developers Conference next week. While it’s not technically the first time Samsung is allo third-parties to develop apps for Bixby, the report states the support could be wider this time. Samsung hopes having third-parties develop applications for Bixby will make the AI assistant catch up to its rivals like the Google Assistant, Alexa or Siri. Even Microsoft’s Cortana is being used by people more than Bixby. The report stated that Samsung will announce how developers can create ‘capsules’ for Bixby. It sounds a lot like Alexa Skills, which enables the smart speaker platform to hail a cab, book a table, play a game and more. Though Bixby is hardly being used, Samsung is bulldozing consumers with the feature by offering it on 500 million consumer appliances including fridges, washing machines, televisions and more, apart from smartphones. The company plans to install Bixby in all its products by 2020. Active third-party development can make or break a platform. Amazon’s Alexa is so popular today because of its versatility and its wide of range of ‘skills’. Google Assistant too, apart from being installed on every single Android phone sold outside China, is also quite versatile, and has active support from the community. Apple too recently opened Siri up to third parties through Siri Shortcuts this year. Microsoft also has Cortana skills for the same reasons. Samsung is also expected to reveal some concrete details about its upcoming foldable smartphone at its Developers Conference. The foldable smartphone is likely to be launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next year. 

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