Samsung was tipped to open its Bixby voice assistant to developers to provide more of a challenge to Google’s Assistant, Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, alongside the release of more details about an anticipated flexible-screen smartphone.

The company will this week host its Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco. In addition to an opening keynote from DJ Koh, CEO of the IT & Mobile unit, the agenda also includes speakers from Viv Labs, the Samsung-owned artificial intelligence company set up by entrepreneurs which sold Siri to Apple; and Samsung’s head of software and artificial intelligence (AI).

In a report, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said Samsung will enable developers to create functions called “capsules”, which were compared with “skills” for Amazon’s Alexa platform. The capsules will allow customers to verbally complete tasks including booking taxis or ordering food deliveries.

While Samsung has not been seen as a frontrunner in the voice assistant market, it does have the advantage of scale through the ability to Bixby-enable a wide range of consumer electronics products, in addition to its reach as the world’s top smartphone vendor.

Samsung previously positioned Bixby as a unifying layer in its consumer IoT proposition.

Folding
Also fuelling the rumour mill was the fact Samsung Mobile swapped its Twitter account picture for a folded-over version of the Samsung logo. While it is no secret the company has a bendable screen device in the works, this led to speculation that news is imminent.

WSJ said Samsung had held talks with YouTube and Netflix on how to optimise content for the new form factor.