While all eyes are on Samsung now because of the official announcement of their Galaxy Note 8, they might as well make several big announcements to further boost their brand. DJ Koh, president of the Korean OEM’s mobile division, confirmed that they will be launching the next generation of the Gear S series at the IFA happening next week in Berlin. He also admitted that they are working on a smart speaker that will be launched “soon”, ending previous speculation that they stopped it altogether because of their Bixby problems.
Around this time last year, Samsung actually launched two versions of their Galaxy S3 smartwatch, and so it’s about time that they added a new member to their wearable family. And while the market hasn’t really taken off as expected, brands are still continually churning out new smartwatches and wearables, so this means there is still a demand for it. And launching it during IFA may be a smart move because it may be ahead of the launch of the new Apple Watch (unless Apple decides otherwise). However, no further details were given, so we’d just have to wait for IFA, or at least leaks and rumors to come out.
Another sort of big news is the confirmation that they are indeed working on a smart speaker that will compete with the likes of the Amazon Echo devices, Google Home, etc. Koh said that they may announce it soon but confirmed that they’re already “working on it”. They are “moving quite heavily” on it since they promised a “fruitful user experience at home” for Samsung users. Again, no details were given but it will probably be powered by Bixby.
The digital voice assistant was reportedly the cause of delay for this project since they were having problems with the English version due to grammar and syntax errors as well as the lack of big data. But since they already launched it in the US a few weeks ago, then it probably means the smart speaker is on the go again. We’ll find out soon enough.
