Samsung was in attendance in San Francisco today as the company was hosting their developer conference. Needless to say, as this was a developer conference and the bulk of the 4000 strong audience consisted of developers, Samsung’s main goal was to communicate to those developers the benefits of developing for Samsung. And that is exactly what they did and while making a number of forward-thinking announcements like the expansion of Samsung Pay and the intent to bring to market a dedicated standalone virtual reality headset, Samsung also looked to appeal to developers by flat out number talking.
It is no secret that Android is the biggest (by volume) operating system and is also no secret that Samsung is the biggest (by volume) Android manufacturer and during the conference, Samsung drew on both the company’s current standing and the Android ecosystem as a whole to really drive home that developing for Samsung is the way forward and certainly more beneficial than developing for Apple. Thanks to their increased push into newer fields like virtual reality, Auto, wearables, mobile payments and the general Internet of Things, Samsung tried to get across that the scope of third-party development for Samsung products is only going to grow and widen going forward. Samsung’s President of Mobile, Dongjin Koh, looked to further drive home the point by stating there will be close to 21 billion connected devices by 2020 and pointing out that right now “there are more connected devices than there are people.”
While some of the talk was very pro-Android due to Samsung’s stance as the leading Android manufacturer, the essence of the conference was Samsung and not Android with the company hoping developers will see the benefits of developing for Samsung-specific apps, services, features and whether using Tizen, Android or otherwise. While also hoping the claims of 7.7 billion phones, 3.4 billion smartphones and 5 billion connected devices was enough to highlight the far-reaching capabilities of Samsung. Not to mention, Koh did make it clear that Samsung is a company who is willing to listen to its developers and one which is looking to a more open and collaborative relationship between its software and its developers.