This week Samsung showed the first glance for the Galaxy Series latest model the S10. The video ad was mainly showcasing Bixby, their smart assistant. We also learned just yesterday after the Samsung’s Unpacked event that Bixby is going global, launching support for 4 European languages, official versions of British English, German, Italian and Spanish are now globally available. Samsung’s smart speaker will be available in April. If you combine this information with the Apple acquisition of PullString (Plus the executive shake up), the two companies that have been the farthest behind in the voice technology race are showing their heads with the potential to change the market space. I talked back in November of last year when Samsung presented Bixby:
Bixby platform and the developer studio might be a game changer in the smart assistants race. The Bixby team have a different, novel idea on how an assistant should behave and I’m expecting the competition to only be good for the voice ecosystem overall.
My opinion hasn’t changed over the months, specially since Samsung is also hiring developer evangelists and reaching out to developers to ensure they have the support of the company in their development process. That’s increasingly relevant: Developer attention is the currency for modern platforms and digital assistants are no exception.
Lastly, Facebook, another company who has been trailing at the smart speaker and digital assistants race, signaled that shouldn’t be discounted. Facebook Chief Scientist Yann LeCun said to The Financial Times:
In terms of new uses, one thing Facebook would be interested in is offering smart digital assistants — something that has a level of common sense.
This is going to be a very interesting year for voice technology. Expect more announcements from the major technology companies in the world in the battle to own the voice.
Do you know I’ll be speaking at the SuperBot Conference?
Join me at the SuperBot Conference 2019.
The SuperBot conference will be held San Francisco next Tuesday April 2nd. You can use code “mari” to register and get 25% off price
here. See you there!
As always, much ❤️.