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Both Reuters and Bloomberg independently report that Google is pressuring Samsung to remove it from its duplicate Android ecosystem and advertise Google apps. A “match” was noted between the two corporations across both sites, where Google pressured Samsung to promote the Play Store and Google Assistant on the Galaxy App Store and Samsung’s Bixthrough assistant. Google was in a position to open its wallet and pay Samsung to do so.
Bloomberg’s interpretation of the negotiations is vague and says the agreement would “promote Google’s virtual assistant and Play Store for apps on [Samsung] devices.” Reuters’ latest report is much more accurate and says Samsung is “considering disconnecting its Bixby and Galaxy Apps Store virtual assistant from their mobile devices.” Reuters goes on to say that “Google grants more lucrative terms for Samsung than in previous agreements if it withdraws from its application strategy.” Part of Google’s massive Android Internet coverage is the percentage of advertising profits and profits from Play Store apps with phone manufacturers, and providing Samsung with a higher percentage is a simple way to corrupt the South Korean company to send it.
Voice assistants are primarily interfaces to a search engine and a services ecosystem, two things Samsung doesn’t really invest in, so it has been hard for the company to turn Bixby into something useful. When you say “take a note,” where does it go? Google and Apple both have a sprawling ecosystem for notes, music, reminders, calendar events, photos, maps, and more, all available from your phone and the Web. Samsung’s ecosystem gap means that Bixby relies on a cobbled-together web of third-party services or controlling apps on your Samsung phone, which are mostly forks of Google’s base Android apps.
Samsung’s Bixby comes on your Android devices, Tizen smartwatches and some coolers (not really). But that’s it. Samsung has announced a wise Bixby speaker under the so-called “Galaxy Home” in 2018, but it has been almost two years and the product is nowhere to be found. Instead, Samsung opted for a less expensive “Galaxy Home Mini”, but Home Mini also doesn’t seem to have an advertising product. Samsung has presented it as a loose bonus for some Galaxy S20 pre-orders in South Korea, but is not for sale. The genuine check of a voice assistant is a smart speaker, who has no interface other than voice, and Samsung doesn’t seem confident in Bixby’s ability to do so. The biggest challenge I see in killing Bixby is that it would leave Samsung’s wise men without a voice assistant. I doubt Google will create the Google Assistant for Tizen watches.
Samsung’s Bixby speaker, announced a year ago today, has not yet been introduced. Samsung’s Galaxy app store is used to update Samsung’s top Android apps delivered with a phone, but there is no explanation for why to keep it in a maximum number of countries. Relying completely on the Play Store is complicated because Google Play is not available in China, so in this country, the Samsung app store is useful. However, the company’s app store also doesn’t seem to have a good fortune in China either: the AppInChina app store index ranks Samsung as the 15th maximum app store in China.
I find it hard to believe that Samsung is leaving Bixby and the Galaxy App Store while he was so involved in his dependence on Google in the past. Bloomberg blames the coronavirus for why Samsung would be open to something like this, saying that “the decline in demand for mobile devices during the Covid-19 pandemic has intensified the company’s profit-seeking and weakened its negotiating position with a key partner.”
Google will rate Android OEMs up to $40 according to the phone in the EU. The EU has criticised Google for its location rules, claiming that Google’s licensing situations were anti-competitive. Google’s argument was that Android progression was presented to OEMs for free, and that the inclusion and location of those programs financed their progression through advertising and app revenue. Google’s concession to EU regulators was to raise a paid point of flexibility to the Google Play license, where OEMs can pay up to $40 to disaggregate Google programs and location requirements.
Nothing in Google’s license terms prevents phone brands from creating competing and duplicate services, and on a Samsung phone, Galaxy App Store is also on the home screen, right next to the Play Store. Bixby regularly has its own hardware button compromised on the look of a Samsung phone, and now it can be reopened for some other app, in particular, you can’t assign it to the Google Assistant.
Reuters reports that “companies aim to finalize the terms until Friday.” The launch of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 20 is next week, which is a little early to see dramatic changes in the software. But we will be attentive to the importance of Bixthrough in the presentation of the company.
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