Samsung considers the death of Bixby and its Galaxy App Store, at Google’s discretion

Both Reuters and Google have reported that Google wants Samsung to kill its duplicate ecosystem with Android, instead using Google apps and services. The search giant is willing to share a higher share of revenue with Samsung in exchange for the death of its virtual assistant Bixby and the Galaxy App Store.

The Reuters report is quite specific, confirming that Samsung is considering removing Bixby and Galaxy App Store on its devices. Reuters also revealed that Google has made favorable terms for Samsung, if Samsung is willing to replace Bixby with Google Assistant and only use a single app store, Play Store.

Although no specific disclosures were made, Reuters reported that Google was willing to share advertising revenue and revenue from the Play Store app for Samsung.

Since its launch in 2017, Samsung has put a lot of effort and money into the virtual assistant app Bixby. However, Bixby was not very successful, on the contrary, it made users hate it. Samsung bought Viv Labs startup specializing in virtual assistants, but Bixby still can’t compete with Siri, Google Assistant or Alexa.

The Galaxy App Store is used to update default apps pre-installed on Samsung smartphones. Also, the Galaxy App Store is not that useful, as apps can be downloaded and installed from the Play Store. In China, however, this app store is more useful, because Google Play services are not available.

Currently, Google’s presence on Samsung smartphones is very strong. Both Play Store and Google Search are preloaded, displayed right on the home screen. Google Search is also the default search engine on Samsung smartphones. However, it seems that Google wants more than that.

Samsung has also been very concerned about relying too much on Google. But according to a Reuters report, the Covid-19 epidemic could spur change. When smartphone sales decline, Samsung needs to have more sources of income and working with Google is a solution to that difficulty.

Reference: arstechnica