Samsung's English Bixby Might Be delayed: Needs More Data English Bixby, Says Report

Samsung has given a lot of focus into its new Bixby assistant for the launch of the Galaxy S8 and S8+. Four aspects of Bixby were announced during the event: Vision, Remind, Home, and Voice, the latter of which is still not functional outside of Samsung's home market of Korea.

A Samsung spokesperson has given information to The Korea Herald that developing Bixby in other languages is taking more time than Samsung has expected largely because of the lack of the accumulation of big data. The report also reads that there are a number of obstacles which are causing the consistent delays.

Communication between the English engineering team and Korea is slow due to time differences and geographical/language barriers. The Chinese version of Bixby is in a similar boat, says report.

In October, Samsung has acquired Viv Labs, the same company which has developed Siri. Samsung says that once it can get Bixby Voice going it will apply Viv Labs' AI into Bixby that probably won't happen until 'Bixby becomes more complete', publication notes.

Samsung's Bixby Voice is going to let the user control most aspects of the latest flagship phone, Galaxy S8. While there was an early beta available for those who signed up for the early access to Bixby Voice, it seems that Samsung is still struggling to get the Voice assistant released, due to the abovementioned reasons causing delays, as reported by GSM Arena.

This is now the second major delay the virtual assistant has faced since Samsung's flagship Galaxy S8 smartphone launched in the month of April. Analysts expected Bixby's English debut wouldn't be delayed past the fall, but that likelihood is looking more and more likely as Samsung's struggles continue. In the meantime, rumors suggest the Samsung has been forced to push back plans for a stand-alone Bixby-powered smart speaker, similar to Amazon's Echo, Google Home, and Apple's upcoming HomePod too.