The long-gestating Samsung Galaxy Home smart speaker might finally land in stores at some point soon. According to a Samsung spokesperson speaking with Android Authority, the company is planning on launching the Galaxy Home in the first half of 2019.
That means we should see the Samsung Galaxy Home by the end of June. This contradicts earlier rumors which alleged the device would launch in April, which obviously never happened.
Samsung revealed the Bixby-powered smart speaker during its launch event for the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, which was over nine months ago. Since then, the company has been notably quiet about the piece of hardware, only showing it off in November at the Samsung Developers Conference.
There, we got some hands-on time with the Galaxy Home, but since then we haven’t heard much at all about it.
When the smart speaker does arrive, it will be landing in an already-crowded market dominated by Google and Amazon. It’s unclear how well a smart speaker not powered by Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa will do considering the vice-like grip those two companies have over the smart speaker industry at this point.
However, Samsung pushed the high-end audio capabilities of the Galaxy Home during the Galaxy Note 9 launch, so it could be that the company is going after the high-end speaker market rather than the general consumer market. If so, it would be competing more with high-end brands like Sonos than with something like an Amazon Echo or Google Home.
As of now, pricing, an exact release date, and release markets are unknown. Stay tuned for more details.
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