Probably not, but no one knows for sure yet. The V2 hub is already advertised as being “thread – capable,“ and has been from when it was first released.
Does this mean that they are positioning themselves to take over the Google/Nest division?
No. See post 10 above for discussion of the differences between thread and Google thread: they are not the same protocol.
Does this mean Thread instead of Groovy?
Groovy is already going away eventually. This is discussed elsewhere in the forum. Not because of this device, but because the backend platform is changing.
If they do take over, does this mean that Samsung is positioning themselves as an end-to-end IOT provider?
They aren’t taking over anything google for the reasons given above, but they already position themselves as an end to end IOT provider through Artik. Nothing to do with this new device.
https://www.artik.io/overview/samsung-artik-end-end-iot/
I know that there are no answers to these questions, but it’s something to speculate about.
There aren’t many answers about the new device, but there are answers to some of your questions. 