Samsung planning “Bixby” speaker to take on Echo, Google Home, HomePod

Enlarge / The hardware Bixby button on the Galaxy S8. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Voice assistant smart speakers are all the rage these days, and if Samsung is good at anything, it’s at doing what everyone else is doing. To join the smart speaker lineup alongside the Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod, and a Microsoft Cortana box, Samsung is apparently planning a smart speaker with its “Bixby” voice assistant integrated.

Samsung’s “Bixby” voice assistant still isn’t out yet in the US, but according to the Wall Street Journal, that isn’t stopping Samsung from charging forward with a Bixby-in-a-box project apparently code-named “Vega.” The report says “the timing is far from determined” and “many of the speaker’s features and other specifications are yet to be decided,” but Samsung has been plugging away at the project for more than a year.

Bixby is supposed to be Samsung’s answer to other voice assistants like Alexia, Siri, and the Google Assistant, but troubles with the English language has led to a delay in the US and other English-speaking countries. Bixby was supposed launch with the Galaxy S8 in April, and it was a feature Samsung thought so highly of that it put a physical button dedicated to Bixby on the side of its flagship smartphone. After the April launch delay, Samsung claimed it would be ready in May, but it wasn’t until June that Bixby saw a “preview” launch in English. Apparently, the final launch will still be a few weeks. “Samsung internally believes [English] voice features are unlikely before the second half of July” the WSJ report said. “The timing of its US launch has been in flux and could still be altered again.”