A new report claims Samsung still intends to launch its smart speaker, the Galaxy Home, in the near future, but without providing many more specifics on the matter.
Samsung first unveiled the Galaxy Home last August as part of the Galaxy Note 9 Unpacked Event, although during that time, the South Korean tech giant did not provide any information about the availability of the smart speaker.
This February, the tech giant claimed that the Galaxy Home would start shipping to interested consumers beginning April. However, this promise did not materialize.
Sources now claim that the development of the Galaxy Home smart speaker is still in progress, and Samsung is allegedly in the process of creating a companion application that will make it easy for users to set up and manage the smart speaker, as well as its accompanying personal assistant, Bixby. The publication further mentioned that the app development is already in its final stages, and this latest milestone suggests that the actual launch of the device is near, with speculation emerging that the product may become available starting this month.
Unlike the Google Home and Amazon Echo, Samsung intends to pitch the Galaxy Home as a premium product that not only allows users to access online information and control SmartThings-compatible smart home devices through voice commands but also offers considerably better audio experience than the competition since it also includes support for natural sound processing. The device can also direct the sound to the location of the user, which should further improve one’s listening experience.
Aside from the premium smart speaker, Samsung Electronics is also reportedly working on a similar device that directly competes with Google Home and Amazon Echo, and this option will reportedly be more affordable than the Galaxy Home. Given the lower price point, some of the hardware features seen in the premium smart speaker will not be present in the cheaper variant, although it will most likely retain support for Samsung’s personal assistant Bixby.
It is essential for Samsung Electronics to launch its smart speaker soon since as much as 26% of consumers in the United States are planning to purchase smart speakers. This trend represents a potential source of revenue for tech companies, especially since tech firms may develop solutions that couple smart speakers and digital assistants with home management systems and other smart home devices.
According to a recent study by Microsoft, around 36-percent of consumers use Google Assistant and Siri regularly, while about 25-percent utilize Amazon Alexa. The more significant proportion of people using Google Assistant and Siri are attributed to the considerably larger number of smartphones currently in use compared to the number of smart speakers present in people’s homes. However, both Google’s and Apple’s digital assistants are slowly making their way to the smart speaker market, while Amazon Alexa is already available as an app on handsets.
However, once the South Korean tech giant manages to release its Galaxy Home speaker, its digital assistant, Bixby, will now be present in both smartphones and smart speakers, bridging the gap between the two types of devices and representing an opportunity for growth that Samsung may take advantage.