Yesterday it was Samsung's turn for a keynote at CES. Depending on exactly how you define consumer electronics, I think that they must be the biggest consumer electronics company in the world. For sure they are #1 in smartphones and I think that they are #1 in TVs. Their booth on the exhibit floor is the size of a small ranch, surrounded by 40-foot-high walls from floor to the lighting gantries. They have refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, smartphones, smartwatches, TVs. A huge product range. The keynote was delivered by Dr. WP Hong. He pointed out at the beginning that Samsung is very well positioned for the Internet of Things (IoT), since it is a company that does everything from semiconductors and other components, up through consumer products like smartphones and televisions and networking, and on up to household appliances like refrigerators. The three legs of the stool of Samsung's IoT strategy are: Devices Platforms Security WP started in the healthcare area with the Samsung Bioprocessor, which is pretty much what it sounds like: it continuously monitors your health through ECG, respiration and so on. It is their first step into the healthcare market. It uses an ECG device called an S-patch that attaches to your chest. The big attraction is to be able to monitor patients without having to keep them in the hospital, which is extremely costly, and to detect problems before they happen. Next on stage was Fabrice Hindry of Samsung's battery technology group. He talked about the battery of things. First, he showed the Stripe battery, which is a very thin (0.3mm) and flexible battery that can be embedded in things like watch straps. Not only is it flexible, but it has a very fast charge, with 50% in 15 minutes. Samsung is also working on what is called "stationary" energy storage, which means large batteries to accompany intermittent energy sources such as solar to make them workable for a much wider range of applications. Jeffrey Evensen of Corning came on to talk about glass. Corning is a major manufacturer of two aspects of consumer electronics. They make Gorilla Glass, which is currently in 4.5B mobile devices (it covers the touchscreen of many smartphones). But they also make optical fiber for networking, another significant, high-impact application of glass. That was it for devices, on to platforms. Samsung has a open software infrastructure called Smartthings. There are already 20,000 developers using it. They also have a smart home cloud API which is not yet rolled out, called IoTivity. Another important aspect of open platforms is testing, and Samsung has infrastructure for that called SITE, which stands for Samsung IoT TEst-framework. Time for another partner, this time Terry Myerson of Microsoft, who extolled all things Windows 10, especially on the latest and greatests Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro S. Actually, he showed a rather creepy application where he could interrogate the washing machine, then find out who had been using it, and correlate all that with which devices his son at home was using when he got home from school. I don't think I want anyone to know that much about me that easily. The third leg of the stool is security, where Samsung has a mobile security platform called Knox (as in Fort Knox, I assume). Lance Braunstein of Goldman Sachs came on to talk about how they have linked their own technology called Lagoon to solve the challenge of creating secure areas on Android phones. They linked Lagoon with Knox to do this, and then partnered with a company called Synchronoss to make it available to others. Samsung also has a smart TV security solution, the equivalent to the home of what Knox is to mobile, a solution that combines on-chip hardware with software, which seems to be the optimal mix of rock-solid security for things like key management (in hardware) with the flexibility of software solutions. Samsung reckons that in the home, the refrigerator, or rather a big touchscreen on the refrigerator, will be the family hub where people's schedules can be maintained. The same refrigerator can also provide connectivity to control other devices around the house, such as lighting. In the living room, the equivalent hub is the smart TV. In the car, you want to be able to control everything, not just the car, from the cockpit. Steven Althaus of BMW showed himself driving to work and then the car parking itself. To wrap up, it was smart buildings and smart cities. Leong Teng Wui of Ascott Residences came on to talk about using technology to improve the experience of being in service residences (primarily for seniors). This can then scale up with interconnectivity to the next level and to entire smart cities. The IoT age is characterized by: Openness Interoperability Close industry cooperation Samsung is on the cutting edge for components and devices, and is driving openness and cooperation with a wide range of partners. One thing that WP emphasized several times during the keynote: IoT data has only one owner, the customer. With that, he brought all the partners, from Corning to Microsoft to BMW, back on stage to emphasize the ecosystem of things.![]()
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