The Wall Street Journal has reported that Samsung will be developing their own voice-activated smart speaker with Bixby as its virtual assistant. The speaker, Codename Vega, is said to rival the likes of Amazon and Apple own smart speakers and the upcoming ones from Apple and Microsoft.
Not much else is known about the specs or features that it provides, but with the market for smart speakers increasing rapidly, Samsung has to really find a way to make it stand out from the competition. The executive vice president of Samsung mentions that Bixby will start with handphones before moving to other areas including controlling the air conditioner or TV. Since Bixby is stored on the cloud, the device would just need to be connected to the Internet and it would integrate with Bixby.
Although this might sound great in the long run, we have seen that the company seem to have problems developing their voice assistant as seen in the release of the S8 that did not include the voice assistant. According to WSJ sources, it is gradually being rolled out but is unlikely to be completed before the second half of July.
