[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics said on Nov. 21 it will release a Chinese version of its voice recognition program Bixby later this month.

It marks the third language to be supported by the artificial intelligence  program along with Korean and English. The official launch is slated for Nov. 30, Samsung said.

The Korean tech giant kicked off a pilot run of the new edition with some 15,000 Chinese users in August. While Bixby was first showcased in March, it has been making slow progress to become multilingual as the program faces hurdles in fully comprehending spoken language.

Industry watchers said the launch will help Samsung recoup its falling share in the Chinese handset market.

Samsung is currently developing more language versions of Bixby, including Spanish and German.

By Alex Lee and newswires (alexlee@heraldcorp.com)