No long-winded analysis in today’s letter, but instead want to give you two important and quick-hitting articles that are both highly relevant as we hurtle toward the end of 2020:
1) Samsung Bixby Developer Relations Team To Shut Down, With Some Responsibilities Shifting To The Viv Division
Quality reporting from Bret Kinsella at Voicebot who has been following the deep transition going on at Samsung with regards to voice and conversational AI.
One thing’s for sure: anything less than 100% full commitment to a voice assistant and voice/AI ecosystem will not get the job done amidst an emerging Amazon/Google duopoly.
Time for Samsung to think strategically about what voice/AI niches to surgically strike, where neither juggernaut is paying as much attention. The originally-planned strategy which would leverage Samsung’s vast market share in smart TVs hopefully will be part of that.
2) Siri Is Honestly Just A Terrible Kitchen Assistant
This article will surprise no one, but it is worth pondering for a moment how this easily could have been written at almost any point in the last decade, and been true.
While Samsung re-configures itself and evaluates its next move, Apple also is quite obviously sidelined in a way which allows Amazon and Google to go directly head-to-head for the mainstream voice/AI user in 2021.
Making matters worse, there is an entirely separate article about an entirely separate problem Apple and Siri recently had, which I’ll dive into more next week.
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