With the down heads and its carefully worn and polished decades-old reputation in tatters over its exploding smartphone flagship and even more unbelievably exploding washing machines, tech giant Samsung is an uphill battle to win back our souls and hearts. It seems desperate to wow us like it formerly used to, and make us believe that all of its recent misfortunes were really just a bad, nasty dream we should be thankful to wake from. It’s racking its brains and unwrapping future tech that is really ambitiously far out to lure us back into its arms. So, don’t be surprised if its next flagship doubles as a helicopter, teleporter, and spaceship.
This week, Samsung has revealed that its next -hopefully non-exploding flagship, the Samsung Galaxy S8 will have a new digital assistant powered by an AI -with the rumored name of “Bixby,” based on tech acquired from its recent capture of Viv Labs, which incidentally helped create the Apple Siri AI. And no, Samsung is not restricting the multi-use AI to merely smartphones, but rather all its future tech, from wearable devices to home appliances will soon sport the feature. Well, I have always wanted an AI to wash and iron my clothes for me anyway!
To guarantee things go exactly as planned or better, it might additionally push the launch date of its ambitious new flagship from an MWC exhibition in February to as late as April next year or even later. Showing that it has learned the tragic folly of rushing devices into the market without their undergoing rigorous testing, in a bid to beat competitors and be the first to the market.
Not surprisingly, the tech giant is facing much skepticism on all fronts, with some deriding its announcement as face-saving hype and hyperbole it will be unable to deliver successfully. With brutal competition from the likes of Amazon, Google and Microsoft and others this is to be expected. Moreover, the big 3 are all seasoned professionals in the AI field with differing sublime offerings to boot, and with all the right tools and processes to ensure their continued dominance. So, Samsung will definitely have to perform a modern day miracle to both differentiate its AI from the sublime offerings of others and demonstrate either its parity to theirs or its clear superiority. Over to you Samsung, let’s see what you got next year. And you better come bearing magnificent gifts or else.