Bixby Will Be Seen but Not Heard When Galaxy S8 Launches

Samsung on Wednesday said that Bixby Voice will not
be operational when its Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones
hit the market.
Some Bixby features -- Vision, Home and Reminder --
will be active when the phones become available on
April 21, Samsung said, but the Bixby Voice capability
won't show up until later this spring.
The delay may be due to a weakness in Bixby's English
language chops, according to some reports. Its voice
recognition in English apparently lags its Korean
language capabilities substantially. That mismatch might
be worrisome to Samsung, as it could cast its new
artificial intelligence assistant in a negative light.
It's also possible that Samsung wants to round up more
third-party apps to support Bixby Voice before it makes
its debut.
Slow and Easy Wins the Race
Whatever the reason underlying it, Samsung's decision
to delay the feature likely is prudent.
"The S8 and S8+ are make-or-break products for
Samsung to successfully rebound from BatteryGate," said
Cliff Raskind, a research director at Strategy Analytics .
The S8 "offers a lot of industry firsts. Everything,
including Bixby, has to be perfect on this rollout," he
told TechNewsWorld. "A launch date slip for Bixby
would, in the final analysis, be more palatable than a
sub-par experience."
Voice recognition requires an "immense orchestration" of
software and services, said Ramon Llamas, a research
manager at IDC.
Bixby "is generation one, was built from the ground up
by Samsung, and doesn't extend beyond its walls," he
told TechNewsWorld. "I'm OK with their giving it a pass
until it's ready for prime time instead of ending up with
egg on their face."
It's important for Samsung to ensure that Bixby works
correctly, noted Gerrit Schneemann, a senior analyst at
IHS Markit.
Samsung is "already behind, and a sloppy launch would
have a negative effect," he told TechNewsWorld, but "a
delayed start -- not so much."
However, "the longer Samsung delays in pushing out
Bixby Voice, the more this will erode consumer
confidence," IDC's Llamas cautioned. "The S8 runs on
Android Nougat, which has Google Assistant built in as
standard. Google Assistant does a lot of things very
well."
More Than a Voice
Bixby is a contextual service, not just a voice assistant,
and "even if the Voice component isn't there yet, Bixby
can still learn about you with Bixby Home and Bixby
Vision," Llamas noted. "There's value in that, because
Bixby has to build up a library of experiences in order to
make the contextual connections."
Bixby "is very much a new wave of opportunity for
Samsung," observed Jeff Orr, a senior practice director at
ABI Research.
"It's not a point solution -- having a certain set of
features and functionality for a particular audience at a
particular price point," he told TechNewsWorld.
The concept underlying Bixby is to make intelligent
machines learn and adapt to humans, instead of having
humans learn how machines interact with the world,
explained Samsung EVP InJong Rhee, when announcing
the new service last month.
With Bixby, Samsung "is positioned in the interaction
layer which is used to engage with other services,"
noted IHS Markit's Schneeman.
"If Samsung's successful with its execution and
broadens Bixby's scope as announced, it'll be an
engagement tool for a broad range of devices, regardless
of the operating system they run," he added.
"This concept of Bixby being able to interact with the
environment around you just using your voice is a
powerful thing that other brands haven't even begun to
articulate," ABI's Orr pointed out. "It's very bold and a
major undertaking."