Samsung is next in line for a piece of Amazon Echo’s massive 70 percent market share. Vega, a smart speaker like the Echo, will be powered by Bixby. However, it’s apparently Bixby that has been holding up the product for so long.
As we know, Bixby has been having trouble with the English language since its no-show on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. Plagued by these issues even the S8 and S8+ don’t have a fully functional English version of Bixby yet, and it will only come during the second half of July, according to Samsung.
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Though we do know that Vega has been under development for a year or more, there’s no information other than the fact that several features and specs are yet to be finalized. Don’t expect anything from Samsung on the voice-activated smart speaker this year, since the sources that provided this information say that the “timing is far from determined.”
Meanwhile, Amazon Echo and Google Home are hogging up all the available market share. In addition, Amazon now has the Echo Look and the Echo Show for this year’s holiday season, and Google could launch its own second generation Google Home 2 in time for that as well.
There’s tough competition in this market, with Lenovo and others having unveiled their own versions of the Amazon Echo smart speaker at CES 2017 in January. And now that the Apple HomePod has been unveiled and Microsoft announcing its Harman Kardon Invoke speakers, Amazon Echo has its work cut out to keep the lead. Not that it’s going to be a problem for the immediate future, but Google Home has already surpassed it in terms of capability.
The stage has now been set for a voice-activated future, in the home in our cars and in our smartphones wherever we go.
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