There were reports earlier that the South Korean giant Samsung has plans of launching its own version of a smart speaker that can handle errands for users in their homes. The company has finally made an official announcement that it is indeed working on such a product and more may be heard about the specs and the timelines for the release of the device.
The announcement came just before the company’s formal event to launch the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.
Samsung will have to lean heavily on its AI-based digital assistant Bixby to listen to voice commands and respond accordingly. And this is where sceptics point out that Samsung may still have to travel some distance. The company had made an announcement only recently that Bixby is now available in over 200 countries now. However, the company knows that Bixby can only respond to commands in the Korean language and English spoken with US accent.
But, the accent with which English is spoken differs widely from the UK to Asia to Africa. It is yet to be ascertained how the digital assistant is performing in these countries. It is to be noted that Bixby has been made available so far in only two devices, the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ and now the Note 8 will also sport the digital assistant.
Samsung has ambitious plans for its digital assistant. Besides the smartphones and the smart speaker, it is planning now, the company’s other products like refrigerators and even televisions are expected to be launched with Bixby doing the bidding of the customers and making their lives easier.
On the smart speaker front, Samsung will have to gear itself to meet competition from such well entrenched players like Amazon’s Alexa-based Echo speaker and Google Assistant-based Home. And Apple Inc is expected to come out with its HomePod speaker before the year is out. There are already reports of Microsoft working on a video display home speaker using artificial intelligence.
It is hoped that having committed itself to a new device to be launched soon, Samsung will go back to the drawing table and make all the necessary improvements to Bixby.