Samsung is going through its worst PR disaster ever. As if the Galaxy Note 7 burning fiasco wasn’t enough, there is now news of even its washing machines exploding. According to a Reuters report, Samsung has stated that it will be recalling about 2.8 million top-load washing machines in the US. Samsung has clearly a lot riding on its upcoming flagships to do some damage control.
On Sunday, Samsung said that it will be launching its own artificial intelligence-backed digital assistant service which will be baked into its upcoming Galaxy S8 flagship smartphone. Just like Google and Apple, Samsung has said that its voice-assistant will work across home appliances and wearable tech devices as well.
Samsung needs something beyond incremental updates in Galaxy S8
Microsoft and Google have developed their artificial intelligence-backed assistants in-house. Apple had acquired Siri, which was an iPhone app back in 2010, before integrating it into its iOS and now macOS ecosystems. Samsung seems to be treading on a similar path. It recently acquired Viv Labs Inc, a San Jose-based AI company which will be powering its digital assistant. Viv Labs Inc was founded in 2012 by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham — the same trio who were the original creators of Siri.
Samsung seems to be wasting no time on the virtual assistant front, as that is clearly becoming a playground for prominent tech players. After Google baked Assistant into its Pixel devices and with Apple already having Siri, it just seems logical for Samsung to have something up its sleeves as well. Even Amazon has Alexa on its Echo home assistant.
After the PR disaster that was the Note 7, Samsung clearly needs something compelling at its next major device launch. Mere incremental updates in the next flagship smartphone is definitely not going to cut it. In such a scenario, the announcement of its own digital assistant, has certainly garnered interest. The duopoly of Apple and Samsung, will clearly be challenged now that Google has entered the ring with its Pixel lineup. For all practical purposes, Google is now in competition with Samsung in the premium smartphone segment.
But, Google has Assistant. Apple has Siri. Samsung has nothing similar, so far.
Considering Samsung has a variety of devices which tie in with its smartphones, relying completely on third party assistants would not have been the smartest move. So Samsung did the next best thing. It bought Viv.
Why Viv’s acquisition is a step in the right direction
Post the acquisition, the pricing details of which are not available, Viv CEO Dag Kittlaus said that Samsung is going to offer Viv a single conversational interface to multiple apps and services, across products, at a global scale. So it is safe to assume, that just like Google’s Assistant, Samsung’s digital assistant will be device-agnostic.
Kittlaus had given a live demo of Viv earlier this year at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Safe to say, that at first glance the Viv looks far superior to the existing virtual assistants.
The two main features of Viv are: third-party apps integration and the ability of its AI to create programs on the fly after understanding the intent of the user. While the former is a feature offered by Siri, Cortana and Assistant, the latter is something interesting that gives Viv, and in effect Samsung, an edge.
The scope is far wider than just smartphones
According to Kittlaus, Samsung offers scale across its product portfolio as well as the sheer number of devices it sells, for Viv to be out there. Back in 2014, Samsung had acquired SmartThings, a smart-home appliances startup which helped connect household devices. This is the list of SmartThings product portfolio.
Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home, are both belong in the home appliances segment, but are essentially vessels for both these companies’ virtual assistants. Samsung’s Viv acquisition opens up the possibility for a similar device from Samsung as well. Add in the fact that Samsung has other smart appliances such as smart TVs, smart refrigerators, smart washing machines and Viv has a significantly larger playground. We are looking at a scale of smart hardware products, that is more than Apple, Google and Microsoft combined.
When asked why Viv has decided to work with Samsung, Kittlaus said, “We realised back then (when we formed Viv) then that this is just the beginning of a much bigger story. So in order to have a real assistant, you need to have an assistant that gets to know you, it needs to be on every kind of device. One thing missing from that picture was scale. So, when we met Samsung, we realised that our visions were so aligned and the possibilities were so large to take this vision and accelerate it.”
We all know the fate of Samsung’s in-house software products such as badaOS and Tizen. Instead of making a digital assistant from scratch, Viv’s acquisition just makes a lot of sense as not only does it cut down the time required for Samsung to get on board the digital assistant bandwagon. But also offer it at a segment-agnostic scale, that Google, Microsoft and Apple can only dream about.
Samsung knows that there is a lot riding on the Galaxy S8. The addition of Viv’s digital assistant is certainly a step in the right direction.
How much better it will be as compared to the incumbents, only time will tell. But from what has been seen with the Viv demo, things definitely look promising.
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