>> Announcer: Live from San Francisco it's TheCUBE covering Samsung Developer Conference 2017. Brought to you by Samsung. (digital music) >> Hey welcome back and we're live here in San Francisco this is TheCUBE's exclusive coverage Samsung Developer Conference #SDC2017, I'm John Furrier co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media Coast My next guest is Ken Yeoung tech reporter here inside TheCUBE. I've known Ken for almost 10 years now plus been in the Silicon Valley beat scene covering technology, communities, and all the cutting edge tech but also some of the old established companies. Great to see you. >> Likewise, thanks for having me. >> So tech reporter, let's have a little reporter session here because reporting here at Samsung, to me, is my first developer conference with Samsung. I stopped going to the Apple World Developer Conference when it became too much of a circus around, you know, close to a couple of years before Steve Jobs died. >> Right. >> Now this whole scene well we will have to talk to Steve Gall when we get down there but here, my first one, my reports an awakening I get the TV thing but I'm like IoT that's my world. >> Ken: Oh really? >> I want to see more IoT >> Ken: Yeah. >> So it's good to see Samsung coming into the cloud and owning that. So, that's exciting for me. What do you see as a report that you could file? >> You know, so it's funny because I actually did write a post this morning after watching the keynote yesterday. While I was at VentureBeat a few months ago I reported on Bixby's launch when it came out with the Galaxy S8 and when I heard about what that was it was kind of interesting. That was one of the biggest selling points for me to switch over from my iPhone. And when I tried it out it was interesting. I was kind of wondering how it would stand up against Google Assistant because both of them are installed on the same device. But now as you see with Bixby 2.0 and now with the SmartThings you start to see Samsung's vision. Right now it's on a mobile, it's just very piecemeal. But now when you tackle it on with the TVs, with the fridges, monitors, ovens and everything like that it becomes your entire home. It becomes your Jarvis. You don't actually have to spend 150 bucks or 200 bucks on an Alexa-enabled device or Google Home that most people may not be totally familiar with. But if you have a TV you're familiar with it. >> Obviously you mentioned Jarvis. That's reference to the old sitcom and when Mark Zuckerberg tried his Jarvis project which was, you know, wire his home from scratch. Although a science project, you talk about real utility. I mean so we're getting down to the consumerization so let's take that to the next level. >> Ken: Right. >> If you look at the trends in Silicon Valley it's certainly in the tech industry block, chain and ICOs are really hot. Mission point offerings. That's based on utility right? So, utility-based ICOs, so communities using gamification. Game apps, utility. Samsung, SmartThings. Using their intelligence to not just be the next Amazon. >> Right >> The commerce cloud company, they're just trying to be a better Samsung. >> Ken: Exactly. >> Which they've had some problems in the past and we've heard from analysts here Patrick Morgan was on, pointed out... Illustrated the point. They're a stovepipe company. And with Bixby 2.0 they're like breaking down the silos. We had the execs on here saying that's their goal. >> Ken: Exactly. Yeah if you look on here everything has been siloed. You look at a lot of tech companies now and you don't get to see their grand vision. Everyone has this proto-program when they start these companies and when they expand then you start to see everything come together. Like for example, whether it's Square, whether it's Apple, whether it's Google or Facebook, right? And Samsung, a storied history, right, they've been around for ages with a lot of great technology and they've got their hands in different parts. But from a consumer standpoint you're like likelihood of you having a Samsung device in your home is probably pretty good and so why not just expand that leverage that technology. Right now tech is all about AI. You start to see a lot of the AI stars get acquired or heavily funded and heavily invested. >> Really The Cube is AI, we're AI machine right here. Right here is the bot, analyst report. People are AI watching. But I mean what the hell is AI? AI is machine learning, using software, >> Data collection. >> Nailed it. >> And personalization. And you look at I interviewed a Samsung executive at CAS last year this January, and he was telling me about the three parts. It has to be personal, it has to be contextual and it has to be conversational in terms of AI. What you saw yesterday during the keynote and what executives and the companies have been repeatedly saying is that's what Bixby is. And you could kind of say that's similar to what Google has with Google Assistant you can see that with Alexa but it's still very... Those technologies are very silent. >> What were those three things again? Personal, >> Personable, contextual, and conversational. >> That is awesome, in fact, that connects with what Amy Joe Kim, CEO of ShuffleBrain. She took it from a different angle; she's building these game apps but she's becoming more of a product development. Because it's not just build a game like a Zynga game or you know, something on a mobile phone. She's bringing gaming systems. Her thesis was people are now part of the game. Now those are my words but, she's essentially saying the game system includes data from your friends. >> Right. >> The game might suck but my friends are still there. So there's still some social equity in there. You're bringing it over to the contextual personal, this is the new magic for app developers. Is this leading to AR? >> Oh absolutely. >> I mean we're talking about ... This is the convergence of the new formulas for successful app development. >> Right, I mean we were talking about earlier what is AI and I mentioned all about data and it's absolutely true. Your home is collecting so much data about you that it's going to offer that personal response. So you're talking about is this going to lead to AR? Absolutely, so whatever data it has about your home you might bring your phone out as you go shopping or whatnot. You might be out sight-seeing and have your camera out. And it might bring back some memories, right or might display a photo from your photo album or something. So there's a lot of interesting ties that could come into it and obviously Samsung's camera on their phones are one of the top ones on the market. So there's potential for it, yeah. >> Sorry Ken, I've got to ask you. So looking at the bigger picture now let's look outside of Samsung. We can look at some tell signs here Google on stage clearly not grand-standing but doing their thing. Android, you know, AR core, starting to see that Google DNA. Now they've got tensor flow and a lot of goodness happening in the cloud with Sam Ramji over there kicking ass at Google doing a great job. Okay, they're the big three, some people call it the big seven I call it the big three. It's Amazon, Microsoft, Google. Everyone else is fighting for four, five, six. Depending on who you want to talk to. But those are the three, what I call, native clouds. Ones that are going to be whole-saleing resource. Amazon is not Google, Amazon has no Android. They dropped their phones. Microsoft, Joe Belfiore said hey I'm done with phones they tapped out. So essentially Microsoft taps out of device. They've still got the Xbox. Amazon tapping out of phones. They've got commerce. They've got web service. They've got entertainment. This is going to be interesting. What's your take? >> Well interesting is an under-statement there. I mean, you look at what the ... Amazon, right now, is basically running the show when it comes to virtual assistant or voice-powered assistance. Alexa, Amazon launched a bunch of Alexa products recently and then soon after, I believe it was the last month, Google launches a whole bunch of Google home devices as well. But what's interesting is that both of those companies are targeting... Have a different approach to what Samsung is, right? Remember Samsung's with Bixby 2.0 is all about consolidating the home, right? In my post I coined that it was basically their fight to unite the internet of things kind of thing. But, you know, when it comes to Alexa with Amazon and Google they're targeting not only the smaller integrations with maybe like August or SmartLocks or thermostats and whatnot but they're also going after retailers and businesses. So how many skills can you have on Alexa? How many, what are they called, actions can you have on Google Home? They're going after businesses. >> Well this is the edge of the network so the reason why, again coming back full-circle, I was very critical on day one yesterday. I was kind of like, data IoT that's our wheelhouse in TheCUBE. Not a lot of messaging around that because I don't think Samsung is ready yet and nor should they be given their evolution. But in Amazon's world >> I think they're ... The way they played it yesterday was pretty good a little humble, like they didn't set that expectation like oh my god this is going to >> They didn't dismiss it but they were basically not highlighting it right. >> Well they did enough. They did enough to entice you to tease it but like, look, they have a long way to go to kind of unite it. SmartThings has been around for a while so they've been kind of building it behind the scenes. Now this is like hey now we're going to slap on AI. It's similar to ... >> What do you hear from developers? I've been hearing some chirping here about AI it's got to be standardized and not sure. >> Oh, absolutely. I think a lot of developers will probably want to see hey if I'm going to build... If I want to leverage AI and kind of consolidate I want to be able to have it to maximize my input maximize my reach. Like I don't want to have to build one action here one service skill here. Whatever Samsung's going to call for Bixby. You know I want to make it that one thing. But Samsung's whole modernization that's going to be interesting in terms of your marketplace. How does that play out? You know, Amazon has recently started to monetize or start to incentivize, as it were, developers. And Google if they're not already doing that will probably has plenty of experience in doing that. With Android and now they can do that with Google. >> So I've got to ask you about Facebook. Facebook has been rumored to have a phone coming but I mean Facebook's >> Ken: They tried that once. >> They're Licking their wounds right now. I mean the love on Facebook is not high. Fake news, platform inconsistencies. >> Ken: Ad issues. >> Moves fast, breaks stuff. Zuck is hurting. It's hurting Zuck. Certainly the Russian stuff. I think, first of all, it's really not Facebook's fault. They never claimed to be some original content machine. They just got taken advantage of through bad arbitrage. >> It's gets it to some scale. >> People are not happy with Facebook right now so it's hard for them to choose a phone. >> Well, you're right. There are rumors that they were going to introduce the phone again after... We all remember Facebook Home which was, you know, we won't talk about that anymore. But I think there was talk about them doing a speaker some sort of video thing. I think they were calling it... I believe it's called Project Aloha. I believe Business ETC. and TechCrunch have reported on that extensively. That is going to compete with what Amazon's going. So everyone is going after Amazon, right. So I think don't discount Samsung on this part I think they are going to be I don't want to call them the dark horse but you know, people are kind of ignoring them right now. >> Well if Samsung actually aligned with Amazon that would be very because they'd have their foot in both camps. Google and Amazon. Just play Switzerland and win on both sides. >> Samsung, I think Samsung >> That might be a vital strategy. Kinesis if the customers wanted to do that. Google can provide some cloud for them, don't know how they feel about that. >> Yeah I mean Samsung will definitely be... I think has the appeal with their history they can go after the bigger retailers. The bigger manufacturers to leverage them because there's some stability as opposed to well I'm not going to give access to my data to Amazon you look at Amazon now as Amazon's one of the probably the de facto leader in that space. You see people teaming up with Google to compete against them. You know, there's a anti-Amazony type of alliance out there. >> Well I would say there's a jealousy factor. >> Ken: True, true. >> But a lot of the fud going out there... I saw Matt Asay's article in InfoWorld... And it was over the top basically saying that Amazon's not giving back an open source. I challenged Andy Jesse two years ago on that and Matt's behind the times. Matt you've got to get with the program you're a little bit hardcore pushed there. But I think he's echoing the fear of the community. Amazon's definitely doing open source first of all but the same thing goes for Ali Baba. I asked the founder of Ali Baba cloud last week when I was in China. You guys are taking open source what are you giving back and it was off the record comment and he was like, you know, they want to give back. So, just all kinds of political and or incumbent positions on open source, that to me is going to be the game-changer. Linux foundation, Hipatchi is growing, exponential growth in open source over the next five to ten years. Just in terms of lines of code shipped. >> Right. >> Linux foundation's shown those numbers and 10% of that code is going to be new. 90% of the code's going to be re-used and so forth. >> Ken: Oh absolutely. I mean you're going to need to have a lot of open source in order for this eco-system to really flourish. To build it on your own and build it proprietary it basically locks it down. Didn't Sony deal with that when they were doing, like, they're own memory cards for cameras and stuff and now their cameras are using SD cards now. So you're starting to see, I think, a lot of companies will need to be supportive of open source. In tech you start to see people boasting that, you know, we are doing this in open source. Or you know, Facebook constantly announces hey we are releasing this into open source. LinkedIn will do that. Any company that you talk to will... >> Except Apple. Apple does some open source. >> Apple does some open source, yeah. >> But they're a closed system and they are cool about it. They're up front it. Okay final question, bottom line, Samsung Developer Conference 2017 what should people know that didn't make it or are watching this, what should they know about what they missed and what Samsung's doing, what they need to do better. >> You know I think what really took the two-day conference is basically Bixby. You look at all the sessions; all about Bixby. SmartThings, sure they consolidated everything into the SmartThings cloud, great. But you know SmartThings has been around for a while and I'm interested to see how well they've been doing. I wish they released a little bit more numbers on those. But Bixby it was kind of an interesting 10 million users on them after three months launching in the US which is very is a pretty good number but they still have a bit of a ways to go and they're constantly making improvements which is a very good, good, good thing as well. >> Ken Yeoung, a friend of TheCUBE, tech reporter formerly with VentureBeat now onto his next thing what are you going to do? Take some time off? >> Take some time off, continue writing about what I see and who knows where that takes me. >> Yeah and it's good to get decompressed, you know, log off for a week or so. I went to China I was kind of off Facebook for a week. It felt great. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> No more political posts. One more Colin Kaepernick kneeling down during the national anthem or one more anti-Trump post I'm going to... It was just disaster and then the whole #MeToo thing hit and oh my god it was just so much hate. A lot of good things happening though in the world and it's good to see you writing out there. It's TheCUBE, I'm John Furrier, live in San Francisco, Samsung Developer Conference exclusive Cube coverage live here we'll be right back with more day two coverage of two days. We'll be right back.