In recent years, smart speakers with built in voice assistants have become increasingly more popular. These gadgets are now synonymous with smart homes and even function as a command hub that links other smart products. Since its booming period, the market for such gadgets has settled down with a few key players holding the major market share. Now, Samsung aims to disrupt the standings by offerings its own smart speaker, which will be the second one the South Korean tech giant has developed.

Samsung Galaxy Mini, as the name suggests, is a miniature variant of the Galaxy Home smart speaker that was originally announced back in August of 2018. However, the Galaxy Home was never launched commercially and was set back numerous times. Thus, it can be said that Samsung has arrived two years late but is finally launching its very own smart speakers.

One of the unique functions that the Galaxy Home Mini offers is an IR function, through which one can control old appliances that can’t be connected to the internet via WiFi. In other words, users can access these old TV’s or other entertainment systems through Samsung’s smart speaker if it’s within the line of sight.

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Furthermore, Samsung Galaxy Home Mini also boasts other features like an AKG speaker, smart home connectivity, and will arrive with Bixby voice assistant. Notably, all of these technologies are owned by Samsung through previous acquisitions, so the company is sourcing its products internally through its subsidiary’s. Although, it remains to be seen whether people would prefer the Samsung smart speaker over the popular Amazon Alexa and Google Nest Home series.

Samsung is set to launch the Galaxy Home Mini on 12th February 2020 and will be initially released in South Korea. The device carries a price tag of 99,000KRW which roughly translates to 83 US Dollars. Unfortunately, it is unknown if the company has future plans on releasing the smart speaker in other markets, but if the gadget succeeds it will most likely see its way overseas soon after.

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Samsung first announced its Galaxy Home smart speaker in 2018, including the Galaxy Home and Galaxy Home Mini. The company was also expected to release the smart speaker last year but that didn’t happen. Some were already tagging the product vaporware but Samsung did assure that the device was being optimized. The Korean tech giant has now finally revealed that the Home Mini smart speaker will be released in 2020.

This was disclosed at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES)in Las Vegas. The tech giant did specify that the Home Mini will be released in early 2020 but was silent about the Galaxy Home speaker which seems to have been discontinued.

The Galaxy Hom Mini smart speaker will attempt to enter a market that is a bit saturated, dominated by the likes of the Google Home and Amazon Echo speakers. However, Samsung believes they will be able to have their own niche within the whole Samsung ecosystem of smart home devices. There are a couple of factors that should work in Samsung’s favour such as the Bixby smart assistant which powers the speaker.

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Samsung says the smart speaker will be different from others in that it will focus on voice commands rather than a seemingly ongoing conversation between you and the smart speaker. They also want to be able to focus more on the hardware itself rather than the user information that they can gather from your interaction with the smart speaker. The speaker will also be able to connect all the Samsung devices connected through SmartThings and be a central hub for all your smart home devices.

Samsung also says consumer privacy will be at the fore so that all your user information will not have to leave your device and go to a cloud somewhere. They are going for a more hands-off approach when it comes to consumer data, unlike Google and Amazon that both depend a lot on gathering data on how their consumers use the smart speaker and the digital assistant, to be able to bring better services. Being a hardware company, Samsung believes it can minimize data sharing.

The company failed to announce a specific date yet as to when it will be finally introduced to the market.

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