Samsung Bixby – Radical refinement

The best refinement is to ditch Bixby

• Undeterred by its failure to launch Galaxy Home, a smart speaker with the execrable Bixby, Samsung is doubling down with a mini version which may just have the beginnings of a use case.
• The new device is slightly larger than the Amazon Dot and in addition to Bixby, the device will be able to interact with Samsung’s smart home platform: SmartThings.
• This means that in households where there are multiple Samsung products, these will now all become voice controllable.
• This, combined with what is certain to be a low price, are the only redeemable features of what is certain to be an unpopular product.
• The original Galaxy Home has yet to launch as Samsung has decided to “refine and enhance” the device which in English means Bixby is not fit for purpose.
• This has nothing to do with hardware as it is Samsung’s subsidiary Harman that is making the device and this company has a wealth of experience when it comes to making good quality speaker hardware and software.
• The quality of a smart assistant is determined by the quality of the AI that drives it, and from that perspective, Samsung is not even in the running.
• In this regard, the top four players remain Google, Baidu, Yandex and Amazon followed by Apple and then Facebook at the back of the pack.
• In order to be compelling, Samsung needs to come up with a voice assistant that, at a minimum, competes well with Siri.
• In that context, Samsung is miles behind even Facebook which some time ago abandoned its attempt at creating an assistant that it had named Facebook M.
• Furthermore, its smartphones are predominantly Google ecosystem devices where Samsung services are barely used and most users grumble about how difficult it is to turn Bixby off or delete it entirely.
• This means that it is Google rather than Samsung that gathers all of the data and it is this data that Samsung needs to improve Bixby.
• Consequently, Bixby is unlikely to improve much beyond its ability to speak Korean.
• This is all well and good, but the Korean market is only a very small part of the market that Samsung is trying to serve, meaning that excellence in Korean is not going to help very much.
• The net result is that the best refinement that Samsung can make to the Galaxy Home and the mini version is to ditch Bixby entirely and replace it with Google assistant.
• This would also have the impact of allowing users to access other smart home product that they have that are not on the Smart Things platform.
• Unfortunately, Samsung remains firmly in the grip of a bad bout of engineering disease (see here) and as a result, I think it will continue to try and develop Bixby.
• Bixby remains a reason not to buy a Samsung product and I continue to see it doing more harm than good to the Samsung brand.
• That being said, Samsung remains in pole position to take up most of Huawei’s ex-China market share which should benefit both revenues and profitability.
• For that reason, I am happy to keep Samsung in my portfolio.
• Ditching Bixby would generate further upside in my opinion.