While the assistant will be released alongside the Galaxy S8 smartphone, the company likely will position the voice assistant as a competitor to Amazon’s Alexa and Alphabet’s Google Assistant. While the company didn't offer a timetable for the release of the assistant, the International Business Times reports that the Galaxy S8 will likely be released early next year. The company will integrate the AI platform powered by Viv Labs, which was acquired by Samsung earlier this year, into its assistant.
While Samsung did not specify exactly which capabilities the voice assistant would have, it did say that developers will be able to upload and attach services. This would make the assistant very similar to Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, both of which are now open to third-party developers. This means, for example, that users could ask the assistant to order them an Uber, tell them the weather, or even control their smart home devices. Samsung EVP Injong Rhee emphasized that the more capabilities the assistant has, the smarter it will ultimately be.
It's likely that the company will use the assistant to power a voice-activated smart home speaker similar to the popular Amazon Echo product line. It was rumored earlier this year that Samsung was working on a competitor to the Echo speaker, as the company submitted plans for a device to the Federal Communications Commission for approval. With the Echo seeing somewhat surprising success, it makes sense for the electronics giant to bring a device to market with the hopes of cutting into Amazon’s dominant market share.
However, if it chooses to go this route, Samsung could face some challenges as it's entering an increasingly crowded market. Alphabet unveiled the Google Home early last month, while Amazon continues to expand the total addressable market for its Echo devices, highlighted by the recent release of a cheaper, revamped Echo Dot. If Samsung hopes to be successful with these products, it will need to distinguish a potential speaker and the voice assistant from the existing offerings on the market.
Despite these advancements, the U.S. smart home market has yet to truly take off. Quirky's announcement that it was filing chapter 11 bankruptcy — and selling off its smart home business, Wink — highlights this well.
At its current state, we believe the smart home market is stuck in the 'chasm' of the technology adoption curve, in which it is struggling to surpass the early-adopter phase and move to the mass-market phase of adoption.
There are many barriers preventing mass-market smart home adoption: high device prices, limited consumer demand and long device replacement cycles. However, the largest barrier is the technological fragmentation of the smart home ecosystem, in which consumers need multiple networking devices, apps and more to build and run their smart home.