Harman Kardon might be the manufacturer behind Samsung’s upcoming Bixby smart speaker, according to noted leaker Ice Universe.
A July 31st, 2018 Ice Universe tweet also mentioned the internal ‘Lux’ codename for the speaker — which first surfaced earlier this month — and suggested that the smart speaker will use Bixby 2.0+.
Samsung smart speaker, internal codename "LUX", Bixby2.0+ Harman
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) July 31, 2018
It makes sense that Samsung would use Harman Kardon to manufacture an upcoming Bixby smart speaker, as the South Korean electronics giant finalized its acquisition of Harmon Kardon in March 2017 for approximately $8 billion USD.
Harman Kardon has experience manufacturing smart speakers, as the company is responsible for the Invoke Cortana-enabled smart speaker.
At the beginning of the year, Samsung Mobile CEO D.J. Koh revealed that the company intends on releasing the Bixby Speaker in the second half of 2018.
Some rumours, however, point to the smart speaker coming out at the same time as the Galaxy Note 9, at the company’s Unpacked event on August 9th, 2018.
Additionally, while we don’t know very much about the new version of Samsung’s Bixby digital assistant, Samsung has previously called the new Bixby a “bold reinvention,” when compared to the company’s early efforts with its first-party digital assistant.
It’s been rumoured that Samsung will most likely implement the digital assistant in its upcoming Galaxy Note 9 smartphone.
Source: Ice Universe
