Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are the ubiquitous technologies at CES this week, with integrations into a wide range of products, but Samsung made it clear this afternoon that it’s standing behind Bixby.
Samsung’s voice assistant was the common thread running its press conference at the big technology conference in Las Vegas. The consumer electronics giant showed new integrations of Bixby in products including refrigerators, televisions and cars, and vowed that the voice assistant will be coming to even more products in the future.
“By 2020, all Samsung connected devices will not only be IoT ready, they will also be intelligent,” promised HS Kim, head of Samsung’s Consumer Electronics Division, in his remarks at the outset of the event.
Doubling-down on Bixby is a risky move. Amazon and Google are leveraging larger ecosystems of products to let people use the same voice assistant across a range of devices. But someone wanting to take full advantage of Bixby across their home and work lives would, at this point, need to amass a large collection of Samsung products. Samsung has announced third-party device support for Bixby, but it’s unclear if that initiative will reach critical mass.
New products shown by Samsung included a digital white board called Flip, a 146-inch modular TV called “The Wall,” and a new version of its Notebook 9 laptop that works with the S-Pen from Samsung’s mobile devices.
Watch Samsung’s archived live stream below.
