Samsung issued a press release a couple of days ago, announcing it will pump some of their profits back into R&D (Research and Development). The initial sum will be a total of US$1.1 billion, but Samsung’s CSO Young Soh (Chief Strategy Officer) stated that it will have an open fund, depending on the size of the opportunity the research will provide.
From this investment, $1 billion will be used to create the Samsung Venture America Fund for R&D, and the other $100 million will be used on the Samsung Catalyst Fund.
The commitment begins with the launch of their Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC) headquarters in Silicon Valley, a location which Soh stated it’s the epicenter of innovation.
The Venture America Fund will be used by the SSIC as well as their other R&D centers around the world. The focus of this effort will be cloud computing, mobile privacy (you can never have too much of that these days), UX (which stands for User Experience), mobile communications health concerns, as well as the development of new devices.
In the name of innovation, Samsung will also launch the SamsungCreate Challenge contest later this year, which will run through the SSIC, the contest will be focused on promoting new ideas through Samsung’s Device Solution Architecture platform. The big prize will be a $10 million seed investment opportunity, and it will provide the winners with incubation and support through the SSIC and partnerships with various R&D researchers. Through this contest the South Korean firm hopes it will encourage artists, engineers and entrepreneurs to come up with new and exciting ways in which we can interact with technology.
According to the press release, Samsung expects that by 2020 there will be 120 billion connected devices around the world. These 120 billion devices will include mobile phones, household appliances, internet connected cars and other electronics that will slowly, but surely, will begin to come with the possibility to be connected to the Internet. Good thing the IPv6 is starting to be taken seriously and is being implemented around the world.
Soh also mentioned that Samsung intends to double its revenue between now and 2020 and grow the company to a market value of $400 billion.
Having said all that, we just have to wait and see what Samsung will have lined for us in the future.