It was reported earlier this year that Samsung was working on a smart speaker like the Amazon Echo. The company's speaker would have been powered by Bixby. Now that Bixby has been launched globally, Samsung has revealed more information about this upcoming product.
The last we heard about Samsung's smart speaker was back in July. It was reported that Samsung might not launch its Bixby smart speaker this year. The company reportedly believed that Amazon dominated the global market and that the Korean market was too small for a smart speaker to make any profits.
The president of Samsung's mobile division DJ Koh confirmed ahead of the Galaxy Note 8 launch today that Samsung is working on a smart speaker. He added that the new speaker will be launched “soon.”
“As I mentioned I wanted to provide a fruitful user experience at home with Samsung devices, and I want to be moving quite heavily on it,” Koh said, which suggests that Samsung is working on this product on a priority basis.
Koh didn't provide any more details about the speaker. He didn't even confirm if it's going to be powered by Bixby. That's a given, though, because it wouldn't make sense for Samsung to launch a smart speaker without Bixby.
It will, after all, help users control their smart home products. Bixby is the voice interface that will make it easy for users to interact with these connected devices. Samsung has also made no secret of the fact that it wants to expand Bixby to more products.
A smart speaker seems like the next logical destination for Bixby and we might see Samsung's iteration of a smart speaker at some point later this year.
