The Smart Speaker department continues to grow with Amazon's Echo, Google Home, and Apple's HomePod. The success of Echo and its voice assistant Alexa has been massive since its release. The HomePod was positioned to redefine home music even before it was introduced to the public.
Most recently, Google is reported to be working on a miniature version of its Google Home. Today, Samsung decides to join the game and confirms it is working on their very own line of a smart speaker. According to CNBC, Samsung's mobile division president DJ Koh announced that the device will be launched soon.
Improving user experience
During the announcement, Koh emphasized his desire to provide a meaningful experience for users at home through Samsung devices. He further stressed that he wants to move heavily on this vision. The company has always had big dreams for its smart home space. Previous efforts were exerted to connect their products from home appliances. With this move, Samsung yet again invests in the smart home vision despite its young and highly competitive market.
Project Vega
According to the news source, this secret project is codenamed Vega and there are not a lot of details released about the device. One question that seems to come up is whether or not the device will feature Bixby, Samsung's personal digital assistant.
With its competitors incorporating their respective voice assistants, it makes sense for Samsung to utilize its own.
In fact, Samsung's flagship Galaxy S8 came with the voice-activated feature. As demonstrated at the Galaxy Note 8 launch, Bixby's features include interacting with smart home gadgets. This means the user can simply utter commands such as launch the camera, open photo gallery, or even set the smartphone to night mode.
This new function is called Bixby Home and is designed to allow people to connect their devices to the smartphone, which is controlled via the digital assistant.
Can it compete?
The smart speaker market is known to be dominated by Amazon and Alexa. At this point, one thing to consider is whether or not Bixby will deliver in performance considering its issues with language.
The voice assistant is said to have struggles understanding English. In fact, prior to its launch this week, there were months of delays before Samsung made Bixby available in more than 200 countries. For now, it can only understand Korean and American English. Koh admitted that the first version of Bixby can be considered a baby. As they move into the smart home vision, hopefully, further enhancements are made.
