Last night an extremely interesting and brave move by the Samsung company was announced, it buying Viv, a personal assistant developed by the creators of Siri. Leaving Apple, they founded a company that led to the creation of the personal assistant Viv, which is, theoretically, an evolved version of Siri,
Because it could not copy the functionality of Siri through S Voice and because it wants to distance itself from Google, the people from Samsung bought Viv in a very good transaction. We are talking about a personal assistant that has at least as much potential as Siri, and this is because it is made by the creators of Apple software.
For now, it is not known how much Samsung paid for Viv, but Apple would have paid 200 million dollars for Siri in 2010, so the amount is probably close. Considering that Samsung does not want to spoil anything that Viv offers, the company will operate independently after the acquisition and will offer a series of new services for the Korean company.
Samsung buys Viv, distances itself from Google
Viv, unlike Siri, had better integration with applications for iOS or Android, but the Apple company solved this problem by releasing iOS 10. However, Viv is based on an artificial intelligence system different from that of Siri, being able to have more complex conversations with the users who use it.
"This is an acquisition that is being done by the mobile team, but we clearly see the interest across our devices," says Samsung SVP Jacopo Lenzi in an interview. "From our perspective and from the client's perspective, the interest and the power of this really comes from taking advantage of the Samsung scale overall, as well as the richness of the touch points we have with consumers."
Viv is what the creators of Siri really wanted to do with their assistant before Apple bought their company, and now they will have the opportunity to do that at Samsung. For now, Viv has a slight advantage over Siri in terms of functionality, but those from Apple are trying to catch up by offering new functions.
By buying Viv, those from Samsung will offer better functions in their terminals than those of Siri, something that will help them fight more seriously with Apple. Moreover, they have made it very clear that they are not interested in offering integration at the operating system level in their own terminals, such as in the Google Pixel, and this could alienate some users.
