I still look forward to the future, but I think the future will be next summer when they have to have something to compete with a more robust HomeKit ecosystem. (Which isnât here yet)
My personal opinion, which I know is unpopular, is that Samsung bought SmartThings not for the technology, and not for the user base. They bought it for the name and the history of good reviews and the ability to keep themselves top of mind with journalists covering the IOT industry. So that two years from now in 2017 when their appliance and home entertainment devices are all IOT capable, they can use the SmartThings name and there will be this long history attached to it showing them as leaders in the space.
Which leaves the original SmartThings management with that amount of time to prove that their product/service is in fact a viable offering moving forward.
Like I said, I know thatâs not a popular opinion. It just seems to me to fit the facts about where Samsung (not the SmartThings division) has put its IOT time, money, and energy since the acquisition. And in the conflict between statements from the ST founders saying âweâre not going to release it until itâs readyâ and what we saw released timed for the big Samsung keynote speeches.
âYour life is your philosophyâ and Samsungâs target market for the last year has clearly, it seems to me, been journalists and industry analysts.
But what do I know?
But, thatâs why i am hopeful. As long as HomeKit was vaporware, Samsung only had to compete on the vaporware level. Something in the field was better than nothing.
Now that HomeKit is becoming a real mass-market product, that puts more pressure on Samsung (again, not the SmartThings executive team) to produce something real that can compete. Or they wonât be winning any IOT product of the year awards for 2016.
I donât know if that something will have anything to do with SmartThings as we know it today. I do hope it will. And I think weâll know the answer by summer of 2016.
meanwhile, it just comes down to whether youâre getting enough value out of the existing system for the time and money youâre putting into it. And that calculation is different for everyone.
JMO.