Facebook Smart Speaker Release Date: Zuckerberg's Company Could Launch Device in October
Facebook and its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is currently in the middle of explaining what happened with Cambridge Analytica, so the company has delayed its home speaker for later this year. The social media giant is now planning to mass produce its own device in time for a launch this coming October, according to reports.
These smart home devices were supposed to be revealed in Facebook's annual F8 developer conference this coming May, until a whistleblower spoiled it all for Zuckerberg by outing Cambridge Analytica's use of the user data harvested from more than 50 million Facebook users.
This particular whistleblower might have thrown a wrench in Facebook's plan to plant a listening device in every home it can, but Zuckerberg and his company could be hoping that their little user data incident will already be blown over and forgotten by October, as implied by their plans, according to DigiTimes.
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The company originally planned to introduce two smart speakers in May next month, but with Zuckerberg regularly making trips to the US Congress to explain to representatives how social media and the internet works, Facebook has decided to shelve its plans for now.
Instead, upstream supply chain sources hinted that they would be starting mass production of the two speakers in June. A launch date in October means that Facebook is expecting to sell less of them this year, and the company has shifted down its target for 2018 by 20 percent to compensate for the delay, according to sources.
According to unconfirmed reports, Facebook is planning to put out not one, but two smart home devices. They are currently referred to by their codenames "Fiona" and "Aloha," and at least one of them will pose competition to Amazon's Echo Show by having a 15-inch display panel made by LG.
The device called "Aloha" would have an adjustable display while "Fiona" is likely a tabletop speaker, and both are said to be manufactured by Pegatron for Facebook. "Aloha" is expected to carry a higher price tag due to the built-in screen.
Facebook is expecting that their device will pose serious competition to Amazon's Echo line of devices, and perhaps Google's home speakers as well. Meanwhile, Apple's HomePod may not pose as much of a threat after all, despite the early hype the Cupertino-based company has rallied around it.
With the devices already delayed by a few months, Facebook is not announcing a specific launch date for their home speakers as of yet. Perhaps it depends on how their recently disclosed fiasco with Cambridge Analytica may turn out, but for now, the company has not even confirmed any current plans to produce any smart speakers as of this time.
Facebook is also building its own team that will design and build its own chips, ones that can be used to power the AI in their home speakers and other devices in the future, according to Bloomberg.
