Samsung Working on Bixby-Powered Speaker Dubbed Vega
With the virtual assistant-powered home speaker race heating up, it’s only natural Samsung would think of putting its newly unveiled Bixby assistant into a similar device. Apple has the HomePod, Google has the Home and Amazon the Echo lineup and according to a recent report, Samsung is also working on a product from this category which has bee codenamed Vega.
According to sources, Samsung partnered up with Harman Kardon in order to build the speaker. The same company also participated in the development of Microsoft’s Invoke smart speaker which is powered by Cortana.
A separate report coming out from WSJ paints a similar picture: Samsung is building a speaker with Bixby onboard – but the question is: when will it arrive? We can’t tell you for sure, at the moment, especially given the difficulties Samsung is facing with the development of Bixby Voice in the US. So we’ll have to guess Vega won’t be launched anytime soon.
The Korean tech giant promised Bixby Voice will launch in the States this spring, but failed to meet the self-imposed deadline. Now information coming out of Asia indicates the feature won’t be available for the public until fall.
But Samsung is taking some steps into the right direction. The company has begun an Early Access testing program for Bixby in the US which lets users test out voice commands.