Samsung may not be creating a Bixby speaker after all

Earlier this month, a report surfaced that said Samsung was going to launch its own smart speaker that would run the Bixby digital personal assistant. The reason behind this device’s creation is that companies like Amazon and Google already had their smart speakers out in the market, each of which has their own digital personal assistant on board, and that Apple just announced the HomePod smart speaker with Siri.

However, that same market may be the reason Samsung isn’t going to launch a smart speaker after all. A report from The Investor says that the smart speaker, codenamed Vega, may not be going into development because the smart speaker market in South Korea is not big enough just yet and that Amazon is dominating the market in the United States.

What’s more, the report states that the engineers working on Bixby and Samsung’s overall artificial intelligence efforts are in much smaller numbers than what other companies have, so branching out into a new product isn’t feasible at this time.

This seems like a situation where it’s just a matter of time. The smart speaker market is only going to get more crowded, yes, but as Bixby gets better, a smart speaker feels inevitable. The report does say that Bixby will still be making its way to Samsung’s refrigerators, so there’s that.

source: androidandme