Later this year Samsung will join just about every tech company in the world right now with the launch of their own smart speaker.

So in a month where Apple have launched the HomePod and Facebook and Spotify are both now rumoured to be developing their own smart speakers, Samsung have revealed more about their upcoming Bixby speaker. At the Mobile World Congress, DJ Koh the president of Samsung’s mobile division confirmed that their Bixby smart speaker will launch in the second half of 2018.

Details are still limited on Bixby’s design and features despite having announced the speaker back in August last year. We can safely assume that Samsung will likely tie it in with other Samsung devices as a hub for a connected home. Of course beyond that we can expect usual smart speaker features like music streaming, a smart assistant, reminders, the weather forecast, and so on.

DJ Koh said: “I want to focus on more premium.” He didn’t specify what that meant so it could refer to the audio quality, their user experience, or even premium streaming services. When they last spoke on it Samsung set a price of roughly $200 which is roughly double the cost of Amazon’s main Echo speaker which kicked off the smart speaker revolution.

In comparison to Apple’s recently launched Homepod however it is still nearly half the price. Whilst Apple’s new speaker has been praised for it’s audio quality, limited Siri functionality has dampened it’s reception.