Bixby 2.0 brings a new SDK to developers in hopes of greater ubiquity

Greg S

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Introduced at the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco, Bixby 2.0 is the next milestone for Samsung's digital assistant. After launching approximately six months ago, major changes are already in the pipeline.

Bixby is available in over 200 different countries but less than half of users with Bixby-capable devices are using it. Since the launch of the Galaxy S8 and S8+, Samsung has sold over 20 million units and orders of the Note 8 are continually streaming in. In order to achieve the desired ubiquity of Bixby, the second generation assistant is said to be "a bold reinvention of the platform."

A private beta program has been launched to allow developers access to the Bixby SDK in hopes of bringing Bixby 2.0 beyond just phones. Samsung wants to see Bixby in TVs, refrigerators, speakers and other forms of connected technology. Even though the SDK is not widely available at this time, Samsung does plan to open it to all developers at some point in the future.

Now that the majority of electronics companies have their own digital assistant, it could take quite some time before end-users become accustomed to the nuances of each. As natural language processing improves across all platforms, evaluating digital assistants may no longer be based on what skills and types of questions can be answered but rather, what hardware accessories best integrate with them.

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