It’s expected that the Samsung Galaxy S8 will arrive with a virtual assistant named Bixby. You know who else has a flagship that takes advantage of an AI-driven helper? Google.
The Pixel and Pixel XL ship out with the Google Assistant onboard, but the AI companion also lives in the Google’s connected speaker, the Home. And as it turns out, Samsung might soon be replicating the same scenario – with its own products obviously.
According to the GalaxyClub which pieced together a bunch of evidence, Samsung is gearing up to launch its own Google Home/Amazon Echo competitor.
If the speculation at hand turns out to be true, Samsung’s upcoming speaker will be called Hello. We’re told that Samsung has filed a patent application for a modified version of Samsung’s experimental Otto robot (half of which actually looks like a Google Home) in Europe – which is believed to be the speaker in question.
What’s more, Samsung also trademarked the Samsung Hello term. The description of the trademark speaks for itself:
“Software that gives personalized features and information based on user’s preferences in the fields of weather, music, entertainment, games, travel, science, health, contact, and social news via voice command and voice recognition.”
Given the fact that smart speakers are in high demand right now, it makes sense Samsung would want to get into the game as well and have share of the pie.
Competition on the market is heating up. For example Lenovo announced a cheaper Amazon Echo alternative with Alexa onboard at CES 2017, but more alternatives are probably going to be unveiled in 2017.
