Samsung will open Bixby to developers, hopefully make it better

• Samsung will open up Bixby to developers, allowing third-parties to create features for the virtual assistant.
• By opening up Bixby to developers, Samsung hopes to catch up with Amazon and Google, which already allow the practice.
• The Samsung Galaxy Home — the company's Bixby-powered smart speaker — still has no release date.

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According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Samsung will make an announcement at the Samsung Developers Conference next week. It's expected Samsung will open up Bixby for development by third-parties.

This wouldn't be the first time Samsung has allowed third-party developers to work with Bixby, but it would be the first time Samsung's opened the doors so wide to the public.

It's likely that Samsung hopes third-party devs will help Bixby catch up to its more-prominent rivals: Google Assistant, Amazon's Alexa, and Apple's Siri. As of now, Bixby is behind even Microsoft's Cortana when it comes to usage by the general public.

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Samsung wants Bixby in every device it sells, whether you like it or not

Thanks to Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple's Siri, and Microsoft's Cortana, the virtual assistant market is a crowded one. Nonetheless, Samsung entered the fray with Bixby in 2017 with the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus …

At the Developers Conference, Samsung will outline how engineers can create "capsules" for Bixby, which sound a lot like the Skills developers already create for Alexa. These Skills enable Alexa to perform tasks like read the news, play games, or book a table at a restaurant.

Although Bixby is way behind when it comes to general adoption, Samsung has an ace up its sleeve: the fact that it sells over 500 million electronic products each year, everything from televisions to refrigerators to smartphones. Every single one of those products could receive Bixby integration, which Samsung plans to do by 2020.

By harnessing the talents of third-party developers, Samsung could turn Bixby into a major competitor to Alexa and Google Assistant. However, it's an uphill battle for Samsung, especially when you consider the company's household smart speaker — the Samsung Galaxy Home — is still MIA with no release date in sight.

At the Samsung Developers Conference, we also expect to finally hear some concrete details about its upcoming foldable smartphone, which the company has been working on for years.

NEXT: Samsung takes pity on us, makes it harder to activate Bixby on Note 9

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