Keep it open and I’ll stay. Make it proprietary and I’ll drop it like the plague.
Samsung is all about proprietary though…
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I know congratulations is due for the hardworking people at ST, but I cannot hide that personally I am devastated by this news which is almost like my worst nightmare regarding ST. (much worse than google-nest news)
Samsung makes great h/w but they are mediocre to poor when it comes to s/w and platform creation, which ST needs the most. Also I personally do not trust them as my home automation provider, so I don’t know if I would keep using ST in the long run. (besides ST - Homekit integration I expect would be much less likely now I assume…)
I don’t deny that ST people deserve reward for their hard work and innovation they brought to the market. I just have doubt if Samsung is the right one that can give that reward besides $$. (but even that, $200mil seems way undervalued.) Samsung is not known for openness and is notorious for poor software, so I fear their corporate culture and philosophy would do more harm than any R&D money could make up for. 
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this is confusing though, earlier today i read that Samsung was partnering with Nest to make a new standard
http://gigaom.com/2014/07/15/nest-and-samsung-launch-thread-a-wireless-mesh-standard-for-the-smart-home/
but then they gonna buy ST to compete with Google who owns Nest?
although I guess it does sound very Samsung like … (Samsung Android phones yet Samsung created Tizen to compete with Android)
Don’t you love standards? There’re so many to chose from! 
Who the heck need yet another ‘standard’ on top of 802.15.4 in already crowded 2.4 GHz band?
According to Boross, Wi-Fi is both power hungry and made for big data
That Borass guy needs to do his homework. TI has recently announced a single-chip embedded WiFi micro controller that can run on two AA batteries for over a year.
In my experience, samsung is the epitome of arrogance and bad taste. They have continually demonstrated they care very little about their customers, and that quantity vs quality is the answer to today’s markets. The amount of disdain I hold for this “anything goes” juggernaut can’t be described by mere words. Suffice it to say that if the news of this acquisition is true, the future is in serious doubt.
You see, SmartThings doesn’t work; at least not for the purpose intended. I came to Z-Wave/Zigbee primarily to improve the reliability of an old powerline network, whose devices occasionally go AWOL. My experience over the last two months has been that the SmartThings side of Z-Wave/Zigbee is actually worse, demonstrating numerous outages where nothing works (as recent as last night). The platform status page is a lie, with numerous, confirmed outages not being reported there.
So why am I still using SmartThings (and spending considerable effort on it)? It is a combination of perceived potential, confidence, and hope; all of which FLY out the window if samsung becomes involved. Oh Google! Why couldn’t you have purchased SmartThings; it would have been a perfect fit. I can’t think of a worse one than samsung, with maybe the possibility of general motors.
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Well, on one hand I have limited access with Samsung. I only got my first phone from them just two weeks ago. I’ve been happy with it so far, but again… very limited interaction with them.
That said, I’m usually not in favor of big corporate buyouts like this. I think it usually turns out of be bad for the initial consumers eventually. I think the parent company will want to impose their will… their way of doing things and many of the early subscribers bought in because of the way that SmartThings was doing their thing.
In a perfect world Samsung will slap their name on the product… maybe push some marketing money and some technical know-how into the product (I can see the possibility of more SmartThings created “Things” now), but other wise leave the product alone.
In reality, I don’t see that happening for very long. Even if they setup initially with this method/plan in place, in a few years there will be shake-ups, there will be corporate restructuring, and SmartThings will be likely be pulled more into the fold.
Right now ST is still a great product. I’ll admit that I haven’t really had much hands on with other options out there, but when I’ve looked most other things don’t have the flexibility of ST or the maturity. I have no plans to cut the cord on ST right now if the Samsung deal goes through. But it’ll certainly make me look at other products again and if a parent company starts messing with the way that ST works right now in a negative way… that’ll certainly push me more.
Now, on a side note, I can’t blame the brass at ST. They are trying to make a good product but they also aren’t trying to do it for nothing. They, as well as their investors, want/need a payout. If Samsung (or another major company) comes along and offers big money, it’s awful hard to say: “No thanks, we’d prefer to scrap by so we can be innovative.”
Furthermore, as more of the big players get into the market (Apple, Google, Microsoft) it’s going to be increasingly hard to be an independent and be successful. I’m sure we’ve all seen examples of a good product being beaten by a lesser one that had a bigger name, more marketing, and more money behind it. This could easily be a case were the ST brass are looking at it and saying: “We can get a multi-million dollar payout now for everyone involved in creating this product, or we can refuse, continue to be an innovative, independent company and slowly watch our market share slip away to the big names… eventually shutting our doors in 5 years with virtually nothing to show for it.”
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Please say it isn’t so. If so, one word: “devastated.”
I think it speaks volumes that Urman or Ben haven’t chimed in yet.
Just my .02
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They probably can’t especially if its not a done deal (which it appears it isn’t) and if there are other potential bidders.
I expect that whenever it’s officially announced or renounced they will come on the forums and let us all know.
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I can (if this is true). Plenty of small entities have held out from acquisitions like this, and many have signed for a bigger paycheck later (from more appropriate entities). They had confidence in the value of what they were bringing to the table, and that they would find an appropriate home.
But samsung… seriously! Samsung!
You might ask yourself why a juggernaut like samsung wants SmartThings. To compete in the HA market with an open platform? Doubtful, as the revenue there would be a drop in the bucket to them.
They want an ecosystem (just like Apple’s); one like they’ve tried to build with mobile (linked together on proprietary feature sets). But they want to extend it to include smart refrigerators, ovens, TV’s, air conditioners, and the rest of the plethora of crap they churn out. Because if you buy all samsung, they will all play nice together. That’s a huge marketing incentive.
Our kickstarted, open-platform, indie smart stuff… a marketing incentive for Korean appliances. Sorry… this just sucks.
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Google bought Nest for 3 billion and ST is worth only 200 mil?
How come 2 devices are worth more than a complete system?
My point exactly. It kind of confirms that the “rumor” is more than just a rumor. If STs was in their offices saying ain’t no way, ain’t no how, we’d be hearing that from them too. The silence reveals the truth IMO.
Only saving grace here is their devices aren’t on some proprietary paltform. So all the money I invested into devices shouldn’t be a problem. So I can dump STs and go to something else relatively easy.
Sad thing is all the people who put in tons of time WITHOUT PAY, and in most cases without any real recognition, to make this platform what it is are probably going to end up having that work mean nothing. Thanks to all the developers on the forum for making STs a GREAT platform!!!
For instance if Sammy buys these are just a few of the things that will be no more and why:
Nest - Owned by Google
Dropcam - Owned by Nest (Google)
Foscam - Sammy has there own smart cam
My Q Garage - Sammy can’t make money on it.
Insteon - Sammy will see this as a competitor
And the big one… ALL 3rd party devices.
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Market share and brand knowledge
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And Nest has at its head a rather brilliant product designer.
Some great points and I guess my concern would be if it is Samsung they will indeed close out many 3rd party products from integrating with ST.
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iPhone support too? Sammy doesn’t play well with Apple.
Yeah I just can’t ever get my head around that part of things with Apple and Samsungs relationship… they sue the heck out of each other yet Samsung supplies parts for Apple products.
But I did just move to Android from an iPhone 5s so will see.
If this is true, congrats to the ST team. They made a great product and deserve this “reward”.
That said, I’m not happy that Samsung is the buyer. After seeing what they did with Boxee (or didn’t do) I’m concerned about the future of the ST platform. I only recently bought my ST hub b/c I loved the open-ness of the platfrom. I guess worst case I’d only be out the price of the hub since all of the sensors and switches are generic z-wave.
I really don’t see this as being good for anyone except the owners of ST. Which they well deserve. Honestly, I’m extremely dissatisfied with ST’s. It’s very unreliable (almost every day something doesn’t fire or falls off the network), difficult to program and understand (how many threads are there trying to explain what Modes are), and in general not much fun to use. When I first installed the system I put lots of time into programming it, trying to get it to do all kinds of cool things using motion sensors, door sensors etc. but it became so unreliable that now I just have it doing basic things such as turning lights on at dusk and off at a certain time, and also Presence using our iPhones. And even these simple tasks don’t work reliably as right now my wife’s iPhone keeps showing as Home whether she is or not, and my daughter’s doesn’t register at all.
Not to sidetrack but IMO, of all the big companies attempting to move into this market segment, I think Apple is the one that is poised to be the most successful because they have (or are working on) both the hardware and software to do so:
Apple TV boxes would act as a hub. It could also act as another UI via the TV screen ala Control4
iPods/iPhones/iPads as controllers and sensors (with iWatch supposedly coming soon)
They now own Primesense, which makes the Kinect. This technology can not only detect motion, but hand movement, and most importantly individual people via face recognition
They bought iBeacons, which not only detect presence, but triangulate position within a space.
They are moving into cars via CarPlay
And last but not least, Apple’s huge array of Apps and ability to write software that works. Of course the most voiced complaint that people make when talking about Apple is that their “Walled Garden” is too closed. But I think that’s exactly what HA needs to make it sell to the masses. Something that’s easy to program and is reliable. Period.
The tricky part I think will be in how they deal with established hardware such as Z-Wave & Zigbee or thermostats and door locks etc I doubt that they would want to get into manufacturing on that side but I’m sure they’d do some sort of licensing deals i.e. Apple Approved hardware.
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Hi guys.
We don’t comment on rumors or speculation.
I do love seeing the passion here on these forums. I really love our community. We’re committed to continuing to create THE Open Platform for the internet of things, same as always.
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