It’s hardly top dog in home automation by any standard other than reviews in 2015 consumer tech magazines.
It’s easy to forget in forums like this, but there are literally millions more customers using home automation from monthly contract services such as Xfinity and Time Warner.
At CES 2017, the spokesperson from the Z wave alliance said that two thirds of Z wave devices sold are professionally installed. Very few of those are for a SmartThings system.
And while SmartThings doesn’t publish exact numbers, based on what was said in 2016 it seems pretty likely that wink has a larger customer base. But again, both are small compared to the cable and security companies.
It does seem possible that SmartThings wants to change its emphasis to something that fits nicely with the Samsung television and appliance markets. A consumer-ready mass-market product would be millions or even tens of millions of potential customers, way more than would ever be interested in A thingshield project.
But if that’s their target, and they haven’t said that it is, they would be making a decision based on where they want to be, not on where they are now.
Meanwhile, there are some alternatives for the thingshield. The ESP8266 seems to be the most popular right now, and there are several projects that have been done with that. The Particle photon was popular last year.
Some discussion of these and other alternatives in the following thread:
Markets shift, companies evolve, things change. This is a very creative and technically adept community, so I’ve no doubt that people will be able to continue their maker projects using other technologies. Whether they will still want to base those on SmartThings is the decision each person will have to make for themselves.