It looks more like B2B solution, rather than consumer offering.
The Smart Home Cloud API provides methods to control and monitor Samsung Smart Home devices. Through this Smart Home Control Service, a partner’s application can connect with various devices and provide enhanced services to their customer.
Smart Home Control Service operates through Cloud-to-Cloud integration between the Partner Cloud and Smart Home Cloud.
SmartThings | Samsung Developers]
Taking a closer look at this, definitely this service uses SmatThings hub as a getaway into the customer’s home not only to pull all sorts of information about their appliances, but control them as well.
So if anyone had any doubts how Samsung is going to monetize SmartThings, I think they can be put to rest now.
Discovery
A partner can obtain a list of all of Smart Home devices registered to a specific user. It contains detailed information such as type, name, model, version and resources.
Sensing
A partner can query information about the status of a specific device. The Sensing API provides the latest resource status of a specific device.
Subscription
A partner can register for notification of changes in Smart Home device and then receive the data in real time.
Notification
If Samsung Home Cloud detects change in device status, it sends the notification and status data to partners.
Control
A partner can control a specific device using the Control API of the Smart Home Cloud.