Samsung Galaxy Home Mini Makes FCC Debut, Its Larger Sibling Still Hasn't Launched
We have known for several months that Samsung is aiming to compete in the growing smart speaker market, though the company has yet to launch its anticipated Galaxy Home speaker with Bixby integration. Even so, however, the company is already looking ahead to launching a more compact version, presumably called the Galaxy Home Mini.
Samsung's intentions have become known by way of a filing with the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for an "AI speaker." There is no other name attached to the device, but images of the upcoming speaker certainly look like a smaller version of the Galaxy Home, as shown above.
There are not a lot of details to digest at the moment, just a bunch of technical documents that deal with things like RF exposure, Bluetooth testing, and other things of interest to the FCC. The one notable tidbit is the model number—it appears as SMV310 in the filing.
It does not appear as though Samsung is pivoting away from a full-size version of the Galaxy Home. As of this writing, a product page on Samsung's website still exists, and it says the Galaxy Home is "coming soon," just as it has for the past few months. It's shaped sort of like a giant pair with the top section cut off, and is rather stylish.
In comparison, the images of the Galaxy Home Mini look like a squished version of the Galaxy Home. It's not clear if it will have feet like the full size speaker does, or if it will sit flat.
Even though none of these products are shipping yet, it's not surprising to see Samsung take an interest. In just the US alone, the number of smart speakers increased by 40 percent to 66.4 million in 2018, according to data by Voicebot.ai, an analytics company. Amazon leads the way with its Echo family, followed by Google and Apple (in that order).
Thumbnail/Top Image Source: FCC
