Bixby ‘capsules’ will bring third-party skills to Samsung’s smart assistant

Samsung will reportedly unveil Bixby “capsules” at SDC 2018 this week. They will essentially be third-party skills for the company's smart assistant, enabling it to do much more than it can right now. The company is already expected to make Bixby-related announcements at its upcoming annual developers' conference.

Samsung's Bixby voice assistant was a bit late to the game. It can perform any function on supported devices in response to voice commands that users can do by tapping on the screen. Samsung's mobile boss DJ Koh did say two months ago that Bixby would be opened up to third-party developers.

Bixby capsules will make Samsung's assistant more useful

The Wall Street Journal reports that Samsung will reveal Bixby capsules at the SDC 2018 this week. These capsules seem to be quite similar to Google Assistant Actions or Alexa Skills. Those assistants enable developers to link their services and provide additional functionality. That's what lets users ask Alexa to call them a cab or check their bank account balance.

Koh has previously said that Samsung will release an SDK for third-party apps on Bixby and an API as well. This will enable developers to integrate the assistant with their apps. The idea with this is to make Bixby more useful. As a result, it goes beyond being a novelty on the company's devices.

There's an even greater need for Bixby capsules now that the Galaxy Home speaker has been revealed. Its Samsung's Bixby-powered smart speaker that will take on the Amazon Echos and Google Homes of the world. The assistants on those devices are significantly more useful than Bixby. For that reason, Samsung has to bridge that gap. It will only be possible if developers turn up and start linking their services to Samsung's assistant as well.

The Samsung Developer Conference 2018 takes place November 7-8 in San Francisco, California. We'll be on the ground to bring you all of the updates from the conference.