CES 2015 : Samsung Eyes The Internet of Things as its New Cash Cow
Samsung hasn’t had a good time with its smartphone business in the past couple of years. As the smartphone market gets more saturated by new players, Samsung is looking for a new arena’s to assert its dominance before the other players catch-up. The company says that by 2020, all its devices will connect to the internet and to each other, thereby creating an internet of things ecosystem.
During its presentation at CES, Samsung showed its dedication to the cause of the Internet of Things (IoT). Samsung, of course, is one of the biggest manufacturers of consumer electronics and hence it has a massive research background to play around with the technology. The company wishes to grab a big portion of the IoT market which is estimated to be worth $7.1 trillion by 2020.
Samsung acquired SmartThings last August which makes hubs that allow various devices to interact with each other.
If you don’t already know, Internet of Things is a concept where all devices are interconnected and provide intuitive functionality and provides immense convenience to the users. For example, if you run out of milk, your refrigerator will recognize it and order milk for you. Another example could be that your keys can recognise when you have left the house and power down the house and when you are coming back it can set the lighting and temperature according to your needs.
Samsung bought a company called SmartThings, last year in August. SmartThings makes hubs that allow internet connected devices to interact with each other. This is what Samsung is banking on for setting up its initial IoT infrastructure. But a proper channel and language for interaction between the various different kinds of devices is still in the process of development. There are some equipments in the market that provide limited experience of IoT, for e.g Google Nest, but a seamless interaction between the devices is still a few years away. Google Nest has an initiative called ‘Work with Nest’ where they are currently working with many companies including LG and Samsung to make the companies devices “smart.”
One good act on the part of Samsung is that it has decided to keep this ecosystem, meaning that the devices will not be locked inside the Samsung infrastructure. This might help the devices to gain more acceptability in the market as people won’t be enthusiastic about investing in Samsung devices only for their houses.
The arena of the Internet of Things is wide open for companies and innovators to plant a flag. This industry is still in the beta stage but once IoT is unleashed to its full potential, it will radically change the way we interact with technology. We hope Samsung does a far better job in this arena than it has done with its popular smartphone arm in the last few years.
