Samsung promised Bixby support for third-party Android apps as part of last month’s Galaxy Note 9 announcement. The company’s mobile CEO, DJ Koh, said that the Bixby support would be launched this fall. Samsung’s annual Developer Conference is to take place in San Francisco, California in November and the current plan of the company is to have both an application programming interface (API) and a full-fledged software development kit (SDK) ready for that conference.
Although Bixby has been on the market since early 2017, Samsung decided to open it to third-party developers only recently and they took this decision because Galaxy Home will be out in the market soon. Galaxy Home is Samsung’s first smart speaker challenging Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home-series products.
Samsung confirmed last month that Bixby SDK and API will allow the developers to make apps which can also be used on smartphones and tablets compatible with the firm’s artificial intelligence assistant. The new version of Bixby, called the Bixby 2.0 will be released with the new Samsung Galaxy Note 9. The new upgrade of Bixby is the first major upgrade of Samsung’s digital companion which will be more receptive of natural-language commands and queries and it will be able to answer questions in a swifter fashion and it is better at controlling every aspect of its host device.
Samsung is hoping that Bixby will soon turn into a full-fledged ecosystem because the assistant is expected to make the jump to a wider variety of consumer electronics in the near future. Galaxy Home will be the next product to join the platform of Bixby. So far, the service is available on selected smartphones, tablets and refrigerators. Samsung has not, so far, named any partners in its new venture but it is expected that the Korean firm will get a lot of support from high-profile companies for its November launch.
