Samsung Galaxy Home smart speaker set to launch in April this year: CEO DJ Koh

South Korean technology giant Samsung launched its latest flagship lineup comprising of Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+ and Galaxy S10E smartphones and unveiled its Galaxy Fold device. The company also launched its new smartwatches and a pair of truly wireless earbuds. However, one much-awaited gadget was missing from the event.

We are talking about Samsung’s rival to Apple’s HomePod – Galaxy Home smart speaker. To recall, the device was launched in August along with Samsung Galaxy Note 9 smartphone and although it didn’t make an appearance at the Unpacked event, the company did reveal its availability details.

Samsung‘s head of mobile business, DJ Koh told technology website CNET that the company will be launching the much-anticipated Galaxy Home speaker in April this year.

Samsung Galaxy Home also made an appearance at the company’s developer conference in November last year. However, the technology giant refused to comment on the launch timeline or availability of the device back then.

With its Galaxy Home speaker, Samsung eyes to take on Apple HomePod and claims that it will provide a better sound quality. The South Korean technology company has worked with its subsidiary Harman in order to create speakers that offer an enhanced sound quality.

It is worth noticing that Samsung Galaxy Home speaker is powered by the company’s virtual assistant Bixby so this will enable users to control the speaker via voice commands. However, at Samsung Galaxy Note 9‘s launch event, the demo of Galaxy Home speaker was not exactly a success as the company’s executives faced issues when they tried to get Bixby to work. Samsung has said that its Galaxy Home speaker would act as a hub for its SmartThings platform.

The speaker comes with eight microphones that enable it to listen to the user regardless of where they are speaking. The company has also claimed that its Galaxy Home speaker can ‘steer’ the sound in the direction from where the user spoke.

We should point out that last year, there were speculations about Samsung working on a smaller variant of the Galaxy Home speaker. We aren’t ruling out that possibility yet as the company may launch two variants of the speaker instead of one in April.

Currently, the smart speaker segment is dominated by Amazon and Google, at least as far as shipments are considered. A new variant of Apple HomePod speaker is also expected to be unveiled this year.