Bixby won’t be so lonely for much longer. Actually, there’s no guarantee of that. Samsung, though, decided it’ll expand capabilities to at least widen the appeal. Now, Samsung’s Bixby getting friendly with the rest of the world.
The digital assistant will soon welcome third-party developers that wish to integrate their services, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Samsung will make the announcement during its developer conference in San Francisco next week. There, Bixby will open up to developers. Alexa and Google Assistant already let developers create skills for specific commands and tasks, but Samsung’s alternative has been desolate so far.
It’s anything but easy for Samsung to attract developers. Amazon and Google are dominating with their digital assistants, and $500 checks aren’t even luring anyone to Bixby. Samsung created an incentive program for developers, but the company hasn’t met its quota. Still, there will be a $10,000 grand prize awarded at the Samsung Developer Conference.
The struggle’s unsurprising; however, Samsung shouldn’t be this far behind. Bixby appears on phones, tablets, televisions, and appliances. Perhaps it’s the versatility of Alexa and Google Assistant, or maybe consumers are incredibly turned off by Bixby’s lacking feature set.
Bixby needs to become stronger as Samsung’s completely unnecessary Galaxy Home approaches its release.
We’ll know more about Bixby’s future, as well as Samsung’s foldable phone, next week. The Samsung Developer Conference runs from November 7-8.
