It seems every major tech company wants you talking to a speaker. Amazon, Google, Apple, and Baidu does with their Alexa, Google Home, HomePod, and Raven H (respectively) smart speakers.
Now Samsung is also said to join in that bandwagon of brands wanting you to have a conversation in the house all by yourself and a speaker. People privy to the matter says the South Korean tech giant is scheduled to launch a smart speaker in the first half of 2018.
The said speaker will have a strong focus on audio quality and enabling you manage your connected appliances in the house like lights, locks, kitchenware (IoT devices). The Samsung Smart Speaker will run on Bixby, the company’s AI-powered digital assistant that is competing with Apple’s Siri, Google’s Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana.
The only bad thing with all these smart speaker and AI-powered technologies, is that each OEM wants to create an ecosystem made up of its devices then lock you up inside it. Take for instance, the said Samsung smart speakers will be powered by the Samsung-made Bixby AI digital assistant. The device will work best if you have Samsung-made appliances such as Samsung Smart TVs, fridge, microwave, washing machine… well, you get the picture.
Essentially, you will be buying into the exclusive club of Samsung’s Internet of Things, and it will cost you a lot if say, you miss Siri’s voice and want it to replace Bixby. The remaining IoT device will not optimally sync with your new Siri-powered Apple’s HomePod.
It is only Microsoft and Amazon who showed willingness to work together in as far as their AI-powered smart speakers. Even then, there seems to be some issue the two needs to iron out before the consumer enjoy such cross-platform AI-powered digital assistant on these gadgets.
