Inspite of the hype created around Bixby, virtual assistant, at the time of the Samsung Galaxy S8 launch that is going to shipped to consumers of April 21, the company has said in a statement that availability of Bixby Voice will be delayed.
Samsung has not given any specific reason for the delay but said in a statement, “Key features of Bixby, including Vision, Home and Reminder, will be available with the global launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8 on April 21 but Bixby Voice will be available in the US on the Galaxy S8 later this spring.”
With the launch of Bixby, Samsung was aiming to take on Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana.
Just to give you a brief background, the use of voice based personal assistant first began in 2011 when Apple launched its iPhone 4S with Siri and soon after Google’s immediate response was in the name Google. Later, Microsoft entered the game with its own version of an intelligent personal assistant – Cortana and last year Google went full throttle with its AI-powered Google Assistant which was initially only available to Pixel devices.
Samsung seems to have relied heavily on its new personal assistant Bixby, so much so that the South Korean giant actually gave a dedicated button on the side, for the personal assistant. Unlike Cortana or Google Assistant, Bixby is deeply engraved to both software and hardware which is why Samsung was bullish about it at the time of the unveiling of Galaxy S8.