Neil Hughes
On the heels of Apple's HomePod announcement, Samsung is said to be working on its own foray into the smart speaker space, although the South Korean company's voice-driven personal assistant, Bixby, hasn't even launched in the U.S.
Samsung's speaker accessory has been in the works for over a year under the codename "Vega," according to The Wall Street Journal. It remains unclear when the device could launch, but expansion into the space would allow the company to compete with the likes of Amazon's Echo lineup and Apple's forthcoming $349 HomePod.
But there's a wrinkle: Samsung's voice control platform, Bixby, apparently doesn't understand English very well. That has led to multiple delays from the platform's originally intended May launch date, with The Korea Herald citing Samsung's lack of access to big data.
Bixby is intended to be Samsung's competitor to Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google Assistant.
For now, Bixby is only available in Korean, and Samsung has not provided an updated timeline on when the platform may launch in the U.S. and elsewhere. This despite the fact that the Samsung Galaxy S8, which launched all the way back in April, has a dedicated physical Bixby button that is essentially useless for customers outside of Korea.
Those issues are said to have hampered development of the "Vega" speaker project, which sources told the Journal could ultimately be scrapped, just like a previous internal effort at a smart speaker dubbed "Hive." Still, with Apple entering in the space and Amazon gaining traction, sources indicated that Samsung is expected to press forward with the initiative.
The report suggested Samsung's product could be more akin to an Amazon Echo, which prioritizes voice controls over sound quality. Apple, on the other hand, has taken a different approach, pitching the HomePod as a premium music accessory with superior quality sound that just so happens to also include Siri.
Set to begin shipping this December, Apple's HomePod will feature an A8 chip and boast realtime acoustic modeling, audio beam-forming, and multi-channel echo cancelation. It will be 7 inches tall, with 7 tweeters and a dynamic modeling subwoofer enclosed under a 3D mesh acoustic fabric.
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31 Comments
Samsung's Harman Kardon unit is building a unit prioritizing acoustics. It is the Invoke but will apparently run Cortana although Samsung could eventually bring Bixby to the unit.
Samsung will work out the hiccups with Bixby. They are a very capable company. They just passed Intel in chip sales. They are on a roll with respect to NAND and OLED technologies. Bixby is software and software is easier to build than cutting edge hardware components.
My Korean friends are quite enamored with Bixby. If Samsung duplicates that experience in English, and they very likely will, given their dedication and focus, it will be a game changer as it is integrated into the Samsung's flagship phones. Much like Siri is in the iPhone.
The HomePod is interesting and I will very likely purchase one. However, I very much like my Samsung Gear S3 with LTE. If Samsung continues to build hardware like this, they are a real force to be reckoned with.
Samsung and Apple are outstanding companies. They will be competitors, but together they will dominate mobile computing. Google is slowly losing android as a dominant platform as they have no answer to the hardware Samsung is planning. Microsoft is incapable and the Chinese manufacturers aren't even in the game anymore. They will be relegated to the lowest end of the market with limited memory, LCD panels, poor performance and poor battery life devices. That is the realm that Android is going to play in. Even Samsung's low end Tizen phones will have better capabilities.
Wait, Samsung has their own Siri? And they chose that name for it? Of all the names, that's what they chose. It's like they're a parody of theft at this point. Or, rather, just a parody of Apple itself. Jeeves, Reginald, Carmichael, Alfred, Oxley, Cavendish, Wadsworth… Plenty of great butler names left for the taking.
*Engrish