Samsung had a bit of a tough time at the hands of Michael Bay, but they had a different bomb to defuse. The fears and concerns of investors in the company took the spotlight at Samsung’s pre-conference, conference for the press. This press conference starred the companies CEO Kwon Oh Hyun, and was almost a direct letter addressed to investors. While Samsung was busy announcing the Galaxy Tab Pro line later on, this even was all about the money.
What fears could investors have in the company? Well it isn’t advertising nor is it drive, instead, it’s growth. Growth should always be a concern for investors in any company, if there is nowhere to go, nothing new to innovate, then the company is not worth investing in, unless your goal is to make a quick return and get out. Though, as with everything, a quick dollar is just as easily lost, as it is earned. Hyun told investors, essentially that the companies fate lies in the hands of the consumers. That is to say, that consumers are looking for innovation and in order to achieve that innovation we consumers crave, Samsung will have to adapt to the times ahead.
Time waits for no one, and aging is just a part of life, what does that mean for Samsung? Consumers will be aging, more importantly, the fan base that has grown attached to Samsung will be aging. Samsung needs to make sure they don’t lose the fans they already have. That will mean aging with them, bringing to light products that will appeal to that fan base. Maybe a Smart cane, or BlueTooth enabled dentures, or something a professional might come up with. That is more of the future talk that people don’t really pay attention to, often times people don’t think about aging when they think about technology of the future, but Samsung is, and they want to make sure we stay comfortable. Closer to present times, Samsung is looking to meteorologists.
More often than not, the forecast is wrong about when it will rain or when it will be hot, so obviously Samsung only partially has the future in mind here, and looks more to the past. According to Hyun, life altering weather events like hurricanes or tornadoes, have had a rise in occurrence rates by 200 percent since 1990. With weather like that, it’s better to just stay inside, and keeping that in mind, Samsung wants to turn their attention inside. We see examples of that with the release of the Samsung Smart Home service. Giving us comfortability and things to do to pass the time while hiding away from a storm, that is of course as long as power stays running. We could just add external battery packs to our storm safety kits.
Besides safety and comfortability, Samsung is thinking working from home is the way of the future, for the most part. Hyun stated that as many as 11 million Americans bring their work home, and that number is consistently growing. Which means accessibility to work computers and files is an area that could be improved, or at least has some innovations begging to be, well innovated. One way is taking some pages out of Google’s playbook, with intuitive and foreseeing technology. Technology that knows what we need and when we need it, think a front door, that can remember when we leave and when we return, creating a pattern or algorithm for when the door should be locked and when it shouldn’t.
Instead, Samsung referenced the Smart Home service – which the Galaxy Gear is very much a part of – and how we could see a doctor without ever leaving our bed, simply by turning on the television and connecting with them. Showing this, and a watered down business plan, definitely shows that there are still many imperfect areas, open for innovation and growth. If you really think about it, there still isn’t even a perfect smart phone and that technology has been around for years, so we still have a long time before we see billboards that cater directly to us by scanning our retinas, or using eye scanners as our wallets. Still, to top off the “Dear Investor” conference, Samsung’s biggest executives paraded onto the stage, to further detail the plans. Overall, the conference was sprinkled with glitter in the form of celebrities and big names, some not hitting home runs of course, but the end game may very well have been achieved.
There is still plenty out there to be invented and improved, and Samsung certainly has their eyes set on where they want to be. The only thing they need to do now, is convince us, you, the consumers. Make us want to buy more than a Galaxy S 5, make us trust them with our health, and privacy, and along the way they will have great competition. However, with great competition, comes great innovations. Boom.