Samsung Electronics’ Consumer Electronics CEO Kim Hyun-suk said Tuesday that the company will launch the Galaxy Home speaker in the third quarter of this year.

“The Galaxy Home speaker, which will be the center of Samsung’s home appliances, is planned to be launched in mid-second half of the year,” Kim told The Korea Herald in response to a question.

Kim answered the question after a press conference held to unveil Samsung’s new lifestyle-focused vision for consumer electronics, Project Prism, and launch a customization-focused refrigerator lineup called Bespoke.

That time frame -- the middle of the second half of the year -- has been widely interpreted to mean the third quarter, according to other Samsung executives.

The Galaxy Home is Samsung’s artificial intelligence-based speaker and is meant to be the hub of its smart home functionalities, according to the company’s internet of things vision. It will enter rivalry with Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Google Home and Apple’s Home Pod. 

It was unveiled at the Galaxy Note 9 Unpacked event in August 2018, and was exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show 2019 in January. But its official rollout has kept being delayed. 

It is considered a plausible scenario that Samsung’s consumer electronics division is working with the IT and mobile communications division on the first AI speaker.

In response to a question about launch plans for a smaller and more portable Galaxy Home Mini speaker, the existence of which hasn’t yet been confirmed, Kim declined to comment.

Images of a product that is alleged to be a miniature version of the Galaxy Home were leaked online last month along with a rumor that Samsung was seeking wave certification for it from the National Radio Research Agency. 

With the goal of connecting all Samsung products by 2020, the tech titan is in the process of equipping every single new product being released on the market, including the latest Bespoke refrigerators, with its Bixby AI platform. “The AI speaker will help achieve completion of Samsung’s IoT initiative,” Kim said. “Currently, Samsung’s smart home app Smart Things (enables) a connected home, which can operate Bixby-powered devices separately.”

“But what we are ultimately trying to do is to integrate all of the connected devices with the speaker and provide software solutions that help improve consumers’ experiences -- for example, an energy-saving solution by controlling all of the connected devices at once,” he explained. 

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)