Samsung announced today that they’re putting some real oomph behind their newly announced push into the Internet of Things market to get their silicon into more gear. Specifically, they plan to dump roughly $1.2 billion into research and development for IoT in the United States alone. A jumpstart like this has the potential to not only give Samsung a good boost in both in-house IoT gear and sales of their chips for others’ IoT devices, but to give a swift kick in the pants to the market itself, a somewhat stagnant beast in the U.S. even with a new CEO revitalizing Google-owned Nest, one of the U.S.’ bigger IoT players despite recent shake-ups, and seeing them put new features into some of their products.
Samsung is calling the new strategic focus “Human-Centered IoT”, meant to indicate the focus on making the devices work around peoples’ lives instead of the other way around as has been the tradition with most of the IoT space since its inception. The investment plan will be taking place over the course of 4 years, with the charge in development to be led by various Samsung entities within the States. Samsung’s Vice Chairman and CEO, Dr. Oh-Hyun Kwon spoke about the plan, saying that Samsung plans to shift the focus in IoT toward the humans using the technology by developing in that direction and, in essence, completely rethinking IoT, at a core level and from the ground up .
Kwon spoke of the need for collaboration that springs from IoT’s nature, and his hopes to spur just that sort of collaboration with this move and the new technologies and advancements that result from it. His lofty goal seems to be nothing short of industry-wide convergence in IoT, despite an ongoing standards war and the constant entry and exit of players in IoT. He advised that the best way to advance the space and encourage such convergence would be for everything to be “open and collaborative”. Specifically, he wants all of the development tools and resources out there to be available to anybody willing to use them, and he wants all of the players in IoT to unite under the common banner of using the technology to better the human condition. Samsung will be kicking off the hopeful revolution with the beginning of their $1.2 billion plan, though no timeline was given for exactly when the plan may come to fruition.