Recently, the Internet of Things has started generating so much buzz that you couldn’t miss it if you wanted to. With tech companies everywhere betting big on what’s believed to be the next big thing in consumer technology, it’s only natural that Samsung Electronics is investing heavily in the emerging sector. The company has already demoed a smart fridge at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this year at Las Vegas, Nevada, but now, the company has officially announced that it will be introducing a brand-new operating system aimed squarely at IoT devices. According to Samsung, the company will announce its new software at the Samsung Developer Conference that is scheduled to be held next month in San Francisco, California.
As per the post on Samsung’s website, the new software will be an “open-source IoT real-time operating system (RTOS), which has a wide scope of features while maintaining a lightweight and efficient footprint”. Samsung has declined to provide any more details regarding the issue at this point in time, but the new operating system may very well power a whole host of future IoT devices from the company, including home appliances, wearables and the like. What’s more, the OS will reportedly be open source, which has led to some speculations online that it might be closely related to Tizen, which is also an open source Linux kernel-based operating system that’s currently used by the company in its Gear S2 line of smartwatches as well as its smart TVs.
Samsung reportedly has a number of connected gadgets and home appliances in the pipeline, including cooking ovens, washing machines and light bulbs. Whether these devices will be powered by the upcoming operating system remains to be seen, but the company apparently believes that making the source code of the operating system freely available will help in quicker adoption of such devices because of the obvious advantages with regards to compatibility and interoperability. With more and more tech companies like compatriot LG Electronics and younger, more enterprising competitors like Xiaomi Technology also jumping on to the IoT bandwagon, Samsung believes that the new open source OS may give it the edge that it needs to take the mantle of the preeminent IoT device-maker, much like its leadership position in the global smartphone sector.