Samsung Announces Bixby 2.0 for IOT

Today announced Bixby 2.0 and SmartThings Cloud. Been following for a long to see what they might do with smart home appliances.  They have the appliances in many homes that could be the platform. Even hear some hints of that we hosted early Samsung smart appliances;   But have seen nothing to indicate it will happen.

Samsung is all talk about the IoT with Bixby 2.0 and SmartThings
Samsung talked up an ambitious vision, but it's all theoretical for now.
By Samuel Axon 

Samsung's annual developer conference at Moscone West in San Francisco doesn't always get a lot of public attention; in past years it has often focused on things like Tizen app development. But at this year's conference, the company focused on launching a new platform for connected devices in the home, the car, and elsewhere—or at least, a collection of previously existent platforms that are getting updated and combined into a new one.

That new platform is called SmartThings Cloud, and it unites existing Samsung IoT services like SmartThings, Samsung Connect, ARTIK, and Harman Ignite. Frankly, Samsung's offerings have been a confusing mess of different platforms and services with overlapping functionality and purposes. It's a rebranding, which could mean little, but developers may be hopeful that it also means an actual restructuring of resources and products to unify what Samsung is doing across all of these. .... " 

Also comments in TheVerge. 

Tizen Operating System

Was brought to my attention through its use as an operating system for phones, watches and appliances.    Best known for its use by Samsung as a standard OS.  I am told that although it is framed as open source,  Samsung attaches a non open EULA.  The Bixby Voice assistant system is written in Tizen.

Tizen Experts is a site covering things Tizen.  They define it this way:

What is Tizen?

Tizen is a open source operating system which is designed for a variety of form factors, from smartphones to in-vehicle infotainment, Camera, Fridges and more. Tizen utilises HTML5 (HTML, Javascript, CSS) as the main focus for application development, allowing developers to maintain a single codebase. .... " 

See also the considerable Wikipedia article on Tizen. 

Samsung Bixby to Expand

Despite my less than stellar interaction with Samsung appliances, we saw that they were likely to be champions in the Smart Home through sheer presence in complex devices.  Saw a demo of their Tizen systems in our own innovation settings, with indications of AI abilities.

Recall Samsung's acquisition of Harman-Kardon for advanced audio.  Now since, their Bixby voice recognition and intelligence is expanding, I will be following.  What will appliances and smart home look like in 2020?   Expect to hear much more of this

Samsung to expand Bixby, voice recognition features to more smart home appliances by 2020 By Deidre Richardson

For four consecutive quarters up through May, Samsung has dominated the home appliances market. With the announcement of the Galaxy Note 8 and its expanded Bixby capabilities such as Quick Commands (using small phrases to perform multiple actions simultaneously), as well as the global rollout of Bixby voice in English to over 200 countries earlier this week, Samsung is making a firm statement: that its Bixby AI, whether you want it or not, is here to stay. ... " 

Coverage of other AI Assistant systems in this blog.