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Samsung's Galaxy Home isn't vaporware, after all.
Speaking to reporters in South Korea on Tuesday (June 4), Samsung CEO Kim Hyun-suk said that the company's Galaxy Home smart speaker will be hitting store shelves sometime in the third quarter of the year. That would suggest that the device could be available as soon as July or as late as September. Kim didn't say exactly when it might launch.
Samsung originally unveiled its Galaxy Home speaker alongside the Galaxy Note 9 last year. There had been some hope that it would launch later that year, but it didn't happen. It was then slated to hit store shelves in April 2019, but again, it was a no-show.
Not surprisingly, some thought that the Galaxy Home might never hit store shelves. But it appears now that it has some life.
MORE: Galaxy Home Adds Smarts But Still Lacks a Ship Date
Indeed, in an interview with the Korea Herald, Kim said that the Galaxy Home "will be the center of Samsung's home appliances."
That would suggest that Samsung has a lot of hope in the Galaxy Home and the place it can fit in the home. The speaker, after all, is powered by artificial intelligence and Samsung's Bixby smart assistant. With help from Bixby, you'll be able to use voice commands to communicate with the virtual assistant and control smart home products.
Aside from controlling the smart home, Galaxy Home would also act as a speaker for the room you're in. Samsung has said that it will provide solid sound and will connect to a variety of popular services, like Spotify and others. Samsung is clearly trying to position it as an alternative to Apple's HomePod on the sound side and Amazon's Alexa and Google's Home on the smart home side.
Looking ahead, though, we still have some big questions. We still don't know exactly when the Galaxy Home will launch and Kim didn't say how much it'll cost. There's also been talk of Samsung launching a Galaxy Home Mini. When asked about that device, which would ostensibly be cheaper than the Galaxy Home, Kim declined to comment.
