Samsung might open Bixby to third-parties to make it smarter

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Samsung will be making an announcement surrounding its smart voice assistant Bixby at its Developers Conference next week. The company will be opening Bixby for development by third-parties.

This wouldn't be the first time when Samsung has opened third-party developers to work with Bixby, but it would mark as the first time the company opened the platform so wide for the public.

The new move aims at making Bixby more competent to its rival smart assistants such as Google Assistant, Amazon's Alexa, and Apple's Siri. As of now, Bixby has a lot to catch up in terms of usage by the users.

At the conference, Samsung will show how engineers can create "capsules" for Bixby, which could be similar to what Skills developers create for Alexa. These Skills enable Alexa to perform tasks like play music, play games, or book a table at a restaurant, and much more.

Although Bixby lacks far behind in terms of general adoption, the fact that Samsung sells over 500 million products every year, ranging from smartphones to home appliances, which could prove to be good for its assistant. If all these devices get Bixby integration, which the company plans to do by 2020, it will help boost the adoption rate of Bixby.

By harnessing the talents of the third-party developers, the company could make Bixby a major threat to Alexa and Google Assistant. This will surely a tough battle for Samsung considering its smart speaker - the Galaxy Home is yet to receive a release date.

At the Samsung Developers Conference, we might get new information about company's much anticipated foldable smartphone, which is said to be in works for years now.
DJ Koh, president, and CEO of Samsung's mobile division has given some information about the device at the launch of Galaxy A9 in Kuala Lumpur. He suggested that the foldable smartphone will double as a tablet.

Previous reports have hinted that the smartphone will have a book-like form factor with a vertically foldable display. The in-folding design will hide the display completely when folded. However, there will be an external display while still in folded position. The smartphone is said to sport a 7.3-inch primary OLED display and a 4.6-inch external OLED display.