Yes, if it means more reliability and more native integrations.
Its not just money that will fix ST its attitude and a willingness to be better.
I think everyone with ST would pay a reasonable monthly subscription if the platform was stable, reliable, regularly updated with a roadmap of developments and above all a responsive and helpful support function.
Key to success here is all of the above along with an extensive range of integrations with common platform such as Hive, Nest , Blink , Ring, Alexa, Google etc
Lets hope the CEO from ST see these posts as they either need to sell it to somebody who will embrace all thee changes or put the investment in time, money and effort in to achieve what could easily be the leading home automation platform.
Again, from a business point of view, Samsung doesn’t need to do that. The current platform is likely over 95% customers who are using it for Control of Samsung smart televisions and smart appliances, literally hundreds of millions of customers, and they mostly like the app a lot. 4.5 stars with over 650,000 reviews.
Again, just from a business point of view, they don’t need the very small sliver of customers who would want more from a home automation platform.
And I’m sure the CEOs at both division and Company level already have access to lots of consumer research on what people want.
If HomeKit started drawing a strong enough customer base that it was moving people from Samsung phones to Apple phones, then I think they would pay attention to the home automation features. But that hasn’t started to happen yet. People who already have iPhones are very likely to now look at HomeKit as a candidate for home automation system, but that’s not the same thing as taking mobile phone market share on the basis of those features.
Submitted with respect.
I think the numbers are fudged JD, eveytime someone activates a device capable of the ST app, using it or not counts as a DL, I absolutely do not believe the app has been purposelly downloaded that amount of times, if it had this forum would be very different
It’s not just the downloads, though, there are over 600,000 ratings on the Google play store.
In comparison, the Hue app has 45,000 ratings. The Hue app is a better approximation of the Home Automation market. The smartthings app reflects the literally millions of people who buy the other Samsung devices.
The Alexa app is close, though: over 500,000 ratings. But smart home is only one part of the features it offers. the Roku app also has about 500,000 ratings. So I think the smartthings ratings count mostly reflects television users. But they are likely people who’ve actually used the app or they wouldn’t have bothered to rate it.
What is needed is for someone to read each review to validate the numbers
Bagsy JD 
You’re totally right, and people should stop making lazy deductions of the Connect app Google ratings. If you simply look at the top 5 relevant ratings, they are all 1 star reviews.
My knowledge of product history is far from complete. But as far as I’m aware there were a lot of talented, enthusiastic, pioneering individuals who threw money at ST back in the kickstarter days.
Fast forward a bit and the same enthusiastic, helpful community thrived. I joined soon after I think, and was absolutely blown away. Hobbyists dream!
Fast forward a few more years and samsung dictated a change in direction. Which has absolutely killed the system.
Fast forward a few more months and I buggered off to hubitat and have never been happier.
Another few months and I can virtually guess today’s date by whichever ‘outage’ post is trending on the front page.
Add more support? No chance. Its dead. The system worked well, but wasn’t profitable.
I hope the coders are able to find a suitable outlet for their enthusiasm and talents. It must be heartbreaking to see how a fantastic product has been intentionally crippled by the parent company.
Following on Samsungs vision, the more I read on this forum, the more I realize Samsung does have a clear vision; this entire migration is a shift can be best summarized as “Shift from Hobbyist to General Consumer”.
Samsung doesn’t want to sell you a motion sensor, there is slim profit marging in it; Samsung wants to sell you an “Appliance With <Motion/Temp/Humidity/etc> Sensor in it”.
Hobbyist find a general all purpose sensor exciting and useful and ponder “If <sensor_type> Then do this for me”. General consumer doesn’t want to think. That’ entire WHAT IT CAN DO FOR IT enters the consumers mind at the purchase stage as a selling point.
While the Graph IDE is a flexible, useful customization tool for us to control the automation brain or Hub, this particular flexibility feature is NEVER found anywhere on general consumer appliance because “Flexibility usually equals Complexity” and that a Negative selling point no manufacturer will advertise. The consumer wants the automation, just not the complexity to configure it, so what do you do? You remove the hub all together and move the brain to the cloud. Then all these smart appliances will advertise the smart automation with a side caveat/requirement “Requires Internet” as part of their product description.
I think Samsung’s vision includes two parts:
- A Walled garden for all Samsung Appliances where integration is guaranteed (like Apples Walled Garden)
- All Non-Samsung Appliances that wants to integrate will use a common set off Samsung cloud API to do so.
That second point is what we are experiencing right now, the breakage of non-Samsung appliances talking to Samsung Brain (Hub). Up to this point, its been many manufacturers point to github to download Custom Data Handlers; from general consumer perspective, this is utter rediculous, they neither have the knowledge, patience or desire. So Samsung moves this entire integration to take place on the cloud, behind the scene. The new APIs are designed for Product Manufacturers (and Developers) and not Hobbyist or Tinkers.
As many have pointed out, those who choose to remain needs to relevel their expectation (me included), and understand in a year or two, this will not be a Hobbyist but Consumer oriented product.
I am going to stick to my belief that the current platform will offer far more to the hobbyist than the legacy platform ever did, and in a way that appeals to companies wishing to integrate their products in a way the legacy platform never did.
I wouldn’t have said that two years ago. Then the legacy platform was useless to anyone but hobbyists, and the new platform was useless to everyone. SmartThings was dead in the water back then. It isn’t now.
I think this may very well end up being true, the new API is definitely rich, if not fully documented and sometimes confusing.
The transition period is rough on developers because of all the undocumented changes and the lack of backwards compatibility. but transition periods often are.
Developers like the ones who created the legacy integrations for Lutron, lightwaveRF, Insteon, etc, The ones who are comfortable setting up intermediary servers, may in the end be much happier with the new platform.
It’s the people who depend on groovy and somebody else’s cloud who will be most frustrated by the changes, I think.
Also, it’s been interesting to watch and see that so far the small Z wave manufacturers like Zooz and Inovelli have been very interested in keeping up with the changes, but the big ones, including Fibaro, Nortek, and Jasco have not. They’re just sticking to the Z wave standard. I’m curious to see if Aeotec pushes for more zwave functionality in the base features, including central scene support and Association tools.
To answer the OPs question…in short, NO. Samsung has deep pockets and has syphoned enough money from me from phones, TVs and appliances. They will never get the first penny from me in subscription fees on top of the thousands I’ve gifted them over the years on sub par products.
Right there on the products purchased Troy. I get a new flagship phone every 2 or 3 years that now cost a grand or so. I’d refuse to pay a subscription to use a HUB that was 60 dollars. I’d rather buy another newer hub once in a while . Even if Aeotec is making the HUB or someone else. The User interface is funded by my refridgerator, wash, dryer, televisions , and Phone.