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Samsung May Not Be Working on a Bixby Powered Amazon Echo Competitor After All

Samsung May Not Be Working on a Bixby-Powered Amazon Echo Competitor After All

By Tasneem Akolawala | Updated: 20 July 2017 14:54 IST

Highlights

Samsung was reported to be working on its own smart speaker
However, the company is now said to be playing the waiting game
Samsung this week added English voice support to Bixby

Earlier this month, Samsung was reported to be making an Amazon Echo competitor, but a fresh report seems to refute those claims. A new report now claims that Samsung feels that competitors in the market like Amazon Echo are way ahead in the game, and the tech giant wants to still indulge in the waiting game before launching a product in the smart speaker space. Korean site The Korea Herald reports that Samsung is not so enthusiastic about the smart speaker market as of now, and is not looking to launch one anytime soon.

“Samsung currently does not view Al speakers as marketable, as the global market is already dominated by unbeatable Amazon and the Korean market is too small to make profits. More importantly, Samsung cannot afford to focus on the uncertain market, as most of its AI specialists -- whose number is much less than that of the US tech giants -- are currently going all out to develop the Bixby version in English,” an anonymous source told the publication.

Amazon Echo currently enjoys 70 percent of the market share in smart speakers, with Google Home market share on the rise. The Korean market, where Samsung has dominance, also has SK Telecom’s NUGU which is quite famous already. Samsung, presumably, prefers to wait it out and see how the market for smart speakers shapes up before taking the plunge.

Also, its Bixby AI’s English version, which was delayed for months due to several technical glitches, has finally been released for Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ users in the US. It still needs to be rolled out in other markets where the smartphones have been made available. All of this suggests that Samsung would be making a smart move by not venturing into smart speakers for now, given how advanced Alexa and Google Assistant are.

In any case, Samsung has confirmed that Bixby is arriving on the Family Hub 2.0 smart fridge, indicating that it’s not completely ruling out the AI assistant’s integration in its smart products line after all.

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