There were a lot of rumours this year that Samsung were going to release a Bixby home speaker, possibly at IFA. We saw a lot of Alexa and Google Assistant powered speakers but the Samsung Bixby speaker failed to materialise.
Samsung-owned Harman did release an Alexa speaker at IFA and now the CEO of Harman International has mentioned the Samsung speaker (we assume it is Bixby powered), stating to the Korean Herald that:
A significant level of joint research and development of the device is underway. The Samsung speaker will have a better AI platform than Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa.
Their AI-powered product is said to be in the works and is set to introduce “a whole new ecosystem” linking mobile devices with home devices (such as their smart fridge).
Whether this is the Bixby-powered speaker we were expecting is unknown but if Samsung are expecting it to be better than Google Assistant and Alexa they have a LOT of work to do on it between now and then. Considering that Bixby only just arrived not long ago here I wouldn’t expect a finished product that matches, let alone bests, any of the current digital assistant offerings.
Obviously we will be paying close attention to this but do not expect anything magical from Samsung just yet with 2018 being the target — and 2018 goes for quite a few days.
Will you consider a Bixby-powered speaker by Harman?
