More from SmartThings on new system

Samsung’s recent developer conference drew over 5,000 attendees from around the world. While Samsung is a leading smartphone manufacturer, the theme of the development conference focused on what Samsung called “Connected Thinking”. DJ Koh, the President of Mobile Communications Business for Samsung Electronics, told the audience that science and technology were coming together for disruptive change. While the smartphone has changed the world, Koh discussed moving beyond the smartphone to a world of “Connected Thinking” that will deliver new intelligence to drive innovation. To enable this new connected thinking world, Samsung announced several product advancements.

Samsung is combining its existing IoT services—SmartThings, Samsung Connect, and ARTIK—into one united IoT platform called the SmartThings Cloud. The goal is to streamline the process of connecting with any SmartThings-compatible device by offering one cloud API. All SmartThings-compatible products will also meet a nine-point security check that will ease some of the security challenges. The SmartThings Cloud provides developers access to one cloud API that can be used across all SmartThings-compatible products to build connected solutions. It also provides secure interoperability and services for business developing commercial and industrial IoT solutions
The company released an improved version of its voice and vision interface called Bixby. 2.0. The latest release brought voice functionality to the company’s devices such as Smart TVs and refrigerators. It can recognize multiple users, which is essential in a service that will be used in a home. While the company didn’t explicitly say it integrated Bixby 1.0 with Viv functions, it appears that some integration has happened. The company said it’s releasing a private beta of SDK for developers to create new voice and vision enabled experiences. Hopefully, Samsung will move this to general availability of its SDK soon.
Project Ambience. Samsung surprised the developer audience with a new offering called Project Ambience. It’s a chip or dongle that can be added to devices within the home to make them smarter with voice and potentially application control.

Advanced augmented reality capabilities. Through a partnership with Google, developers will be able to use the ARCore SDK to bring AR to millions of Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+ and Galaxy Note customers. According to the companies, the partnership offers new business opportunities for developers and a platform for creating immersive new experiences for consumers.

Written by Maribel Lopez , CONTRIBUTOR Forbes.

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Did you attend, @joelw135; I would have enjoyed meeting you!

I was disappointed that there was very little discussion on business details; developers are in this for profits and investors, ya know!

The new SmartThings Cloud has to be monetized somehow for Samsung… Will there be a charge per API call (per Event?); Is there still an Event history storage and query option; are all execution (logic processing) costs now being offloaded to developers own servers and clouds (Amazon lambda etc.)? What business and co-marketing services will Samsung offer? etc.

No I didn’t attend, but someone I know went and was told that yes there will be charges, but nothing on the plan, or any particulars.

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My guess is that, besides other benefits and strategies, Samsung wants to be a major player (or the major player) as the “Amazon Web Services” of certain IoT segments… Starting with consumer, but letting it morph into commercial and institutional use too.

They aren’t providing the full spectrum of cloud computing like AWS (lambda functions, containers, storage, databases, email), but rather, specializing on end-to-end device definition, event management, granular secure cloud-cloud interaction and secure cloud-hub-thing architecture - including but not limited to the SmartThings Hub and ARTIK hardware, Tizen appliances and phone Apps.

I personally think this strategy is “great”, but that it will take years to materialize substantially… Some parts quicker than others. Samsung is playing “the long game” here and is no hurry.

I speculate, unfortunately, that the current SmartThings products, services, and small partners will thus not substantially benefit in the short term.

ie, With much less concern and disrespect than this phrase implies, I believe SmartThings customers will continue to be a part of an ongoing indefinite duration “Beta Test” of Samsung’s grand vision.

Believe me… I’m optimistic about the future; it’s just a lot of uncertainty for now and a likely rocky road!

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You hit it on the nail head. This will be the test platform for their future system.

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If SmartThings was originally branded, sold and marketed as “SmartThings Home Automation Beta Hub”, there might be a lot less confusion and complaints, and a lot more acceptance knowing that the product is a continuous testing platform and not to expect 100% reliability.

Slight correction to the idiom: “You hit the nail on the head” :grin:

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Was the text from the OP originally published somewhere else? Or just here?

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I think I found it on Forbes.

You might want to consider attributing the source of the material.

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