Samsung Bixby Smart Speaker Confirmed, But Why? Michael Kwan February 26, 2018 News It’s obvious enough that Samsung’s big unveil at MWC 2018 in Barcelona this week is the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus. That goes without saying. But it’s not the only trick that they’ve got up their sleeve, because it looks like we’ll be getting a Bixby smart speaker in just a few months. In speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Samsung president DJ Koh confirmed that they will indeed by releasing a Bixby smart speaker some time in the second half of this year. We’d heard rumors that Samsung was working on this project last summer, but up until now, we hadn’t received any official word from Samsung itself. As you might imagine, details are still quite scarce. Even so, it would be hard to imagine that a Samsung Bixby smart speaker would deviate too far from all the other smart speakers that already flood the market. It could be like the Amazon Echo and Google Home where the respective smart assistant is the main appeal. Or maybe it’ll be like the HomePod and the Sonos One where audio quality is most important. I’d venture to guess it’s somewhere in between. Samsung has really been trying to push Bixby on us, even putting a dedicated Bixby button on its phones that frustratingly cannot be remapped do anything else. This could be another way to “convince” the public they want Bixby. The second half of 2018 should also align with the Galaxy Note 9. Koh said that there will be more than one model and it’ll hit multiple pricing tiers, just like Google Home and Amazon Echo, but he wants to “focus on more premium.” If we’ve already got smart speakers with Google Assistant, Alexa, Cortana, and Siri, why not throw a Bixby smart speaker or three into the mix too? Let’s just hope it doesn’t leave a stain behind. Share This With The World!
