Samsung Builds A Wall And Expands Intelligent Home Footprint At CES 2018
Patrick MoorheadSamsung CES 2018
Last week, I and several other members of the Moor Insights & Strategy team attended CES 2018 in Las Vegas. One of the companies I was most looking forward to hearing from was Samsung, particularly in the realm of IoT and the smart home sector. Samsung is the 800lb gorilla and owns consumer electronics and typically, the industry follows their lead. The company’s keynote last Monday did not disappoint, and there were plenty of new announcements to chew on. Here’s my recap of Samsung’s CES 2018 address, the big news stories that came out of it, and a few of my opinions on it.
Introduction
Tim Baxter, President and CEO of Samsung Electronics North America, kicked off the address by reminding the audience that Samsung leads global market share in smartphones, TVs, and wait for it—refrigerators. Baxter touted the $14 Billion Samsung spent on R&D this past year to develop the latest technologies, and the new technologies and subsidiaries it has brought under the Samsung fold—Samsung Pay, SmartThings, Harman, and Dacor, to name a few. Baxter reiterated Samsung’s previous promise that all Samsung devices would be IoT-enabled by 2020, claiming that already 90% of the company’s TVs, appliances, smartphones and tablets were already there. That 2020 date is huge and I think now we can say that voice UI is close to going mainstream. This doesn’t mean perfected, but certainly it will be on more devices than not in 2020.
Patrick MoorheadSamsung CES 2018 -Expanding IoT and Intelligence footprint
Samsung making progress in its IoT strategy
Baxter went on to make the first big announcement of the day—that Samsung Knox technology would be coming to all of Samsung’s consumer tech products, including TVs, signage, and appliances. This is a great move in my mind—security is the biggest risk when it comes to IoT, and it’s good to see Samsung taking it seriously. This is a big deal because of the risk that unprotected IoT devices have. If you recall, botnet Mirai was created on the backs of unprotected IoT devices. With Spectre and Meltdown, we could also have a 500M unit army of Android smartphone bots to do global damage. While it was long time coming, I give Samsung a lot of credit for putting Bixby on everything.
Next, Baxter introduced HS Kim, Head of Samsung’s Consumer Electronics Division and Samsung Research, to talk at greater length about Samsung’s vision for IoT. Samsung’s strategy has three major components: seamless connectivity between devices (with open innovation), having a single cloud to manage all these devices, and lastly—the devices must be intelligent. Kim announced that this spring Samsung would be uniting all of its IoT applications—Samsung Connect, Smart Home, Smart View, and others—into a single SmartThings app, which Samsung says will allow consumers to directly access and control any of their SmartThings-enabled devices from their phones, TV, or car. To get the industry where it needs to be for home IoT growth, first, the walled gardens will build out their interconnectedness followed by the walled gardens some day talking to each other. We’re not where we need to be but headed in the right direction.
Speaking of cars—Samsung also announced at CES that would be connecting HARMAN Ignite to the SmartThings Cloud. In my opinion, the work Samsung is doing with the Harman self-driving and dashboard experience is one of the company’s most overlooked projects—Harman is in almost every car built today.
Patrick MoorheadSamsung CES 2018 talking automotive experiences with Harman
Kim went on to discuss AI and Bixby. Samsung is working to incorporate its Bixby intelligence service into more and more of its devices, with Bixby voice control coming to its Smart TVs and Family Hub refrigerators this year. Kim made the pledge that not only would all Samsung devices be IoT-enabled by 2020, but would also be “intelligent”. Samsung is burning the bridges and going all in on Bixby—we’ll see how it pays off in the coming years. Bixby has a long way to go and as long as I see continued improvements, the number of “seats” won’t be an issue.
">Patrick MoorheadSamsung CES 2018
Last week, I and several other members of the Moor Insights & Strategy team attended CES 2018 in Las Vegas. One of the companies I was most looking forward to hearing from was Samsung, particularly in the realm of IoT and the smart home sector. Samsung is the 800lb gorilla and owns consumer electronics and typically, the industry follows their lead. The company’s keynote last Monday did not disappoint, and there were plenty of new announcements to chew on. Here’s my recap of Samsung’s CES 2018 address, the big news stories that came out of it, and a few of my opinions on it.
Introduction
Tim Baxter, President and CEO of Samsung Electronics North America, kicked off the address by reminding the audience that Samsung leads global market share in smartphones, TVs, and wait for it—refrigerators. Baxter touted the $14 Billion Samsung spent on R&D this past year to develop the latest technologies, and the new technologies and subsidiaries it has brought under the Samsung fold—Samsung Pay, SmartThings, Harman, and Dacor, to name a few. Baxter reiterated Samsung’s previous promise that all Samsung devices would be IoT-enabled by 2020, claiming that already 90% of the company’s TVs, appliances, smartphones and tablets were already there. That 2020 date is huge and I think now we can say that voice UI is close to going mainstream. This doesn’t mean perfected, but certainly it will be on more devices than not in 2020.
Patrick MoorheadSamsung CES 2018 -Expanding IoT and Intelligence footprint
Samsung making progress in its IoT strategy
Baxter went on to make the first big announcement of the day—that Samsung Knox technology would be coming to all of Samsung’s consumer tech products, including TVs, signage, and appliances. This is a great move in my mind—security is the biggest risk when it comes to IoT, and it’s good to see Samsung taking it seriously. This is a big deal because of the risk that unprotected IoT devices have. If you recall, botnet Mirai was created on the backs of unprotected IoT devices. With Spectre and Meltdown, we could also have a 500M unit army of Android smartphone bots to do global damage. While it was long time coming, I give Samsung a lot of credit for putting Bixby on everything.
Next, Baxter introduced HS Kim, Head of Samsung’s Consumer Electronics Division and Samsung Research, to talk at greater length about Samsung’s vision for IoT. Samsung’s strategy has three major components: seamless connectivity between devices (with open innovation), having a single cloud to manage all these devices, and lastly—the devices must be intelligent. Kim announced that this spring Samsung would be uniting all of its IoT applications—Samsung Connect, Smart Home, Smart View, and others—into a single SmartThings app, which Samsung says will allow consumers to directly access and control any of their SmartThings-enabled devices from their phones, TV, or car. To get the industry where it needs to be for home IoT growth, first, the walled gardens will build out their interconnectedness followed by the walled gardens some day talking to each other. We’re not where we need to be but headed in the right direction.
Speaking of cars—Samsung also announced at CES that would be connecting HARMAN Ignite to the SmartThings Cloud. In my opinion, the work Samsung is doing with the Harman self-driving and dashboard experience is one of the company’s most overlooked projects—Harman is in almost every car built today.
Patrick MoorheadSamsung CES 2018 talking automotive experiences with Harman
Kim went on to discuss AI and Bixby. Samsung is working to incorporate its Bixby intelligence service into more and more of its devices, with Bixby voice control coming to its Smart TVs and Family Hub refrigerators this year. Kim made the pledge that not only would all Samsung devices be IoT-enabled by 2020, but would also be “intelligent”. Samsung is burning the bridges and going all in on Bixby—we’ll see how it pays off in the coming years. Bixby has a long way to go and as long as I see continued improvements, the number of “seats” won’t be an issue.
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