While its smartphone business seems to be winning ground, Samsung Electronics continues to expand its horizons towards new market areas including the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud technologies. Not long ago the company has acquired Joyent – a cloud infrastructure provider – and earlier in April 2016 the South Korean giant revealed the details of its new ATRIK cloud platform and ATRIK IoT modules. But surprisingly enough, Samsung also seems to be working on yet another cloud platform designed for owners of Samsung smartphones and tablets. The service is currently known as “Samsung Cloud Together”, and its existence has been confirmed by a recent trademark at the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).
New evidence suggests that Samsung has filed to trademark a new moniker in the European Union, specifically “Samsung Cloud Together”. The name alone is a strong indicative that this should be a cloud-based service Samsung is currently developing, and true enough, the service’s description further confirms its purpose. According to the filing, Samsung Cloud Together revolves around the concept of “electronic storage of data, photos, images, graphics, and audio, videos; Electronic storage of albums, galleries, and other metadata”. This sounds fairly similar to Apple’s own iCloud service, which allows iOS and Mac OS users to upload, manage, and share files in the cloud across multiple Apple devices. Assuming that Samsung Cloud Together is indeed the South Korean manufacturer’s response to Apple’s iCloud service, it’s likely that it will be targeted at owners of Samsung smartphones and tablets. However, the trademark documents don’t reveal much else in regards to what the platform could offer, how exactly it will work, and when it will be available to consumers. Additionally, only time will tell how Samsung intends to monetize the service, how much cloud storage will be offered for free (if any), and what will be the costs for acquiring additional storage in the cloud.
Samsung Electronics’ next major unveiling event will take place at the beginning of August, when the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is to be officially introduced to the public. Needless to say, the unveiling of a new cloud-based storage service along with the upcoming flagship could make the Unpacked event that much more interesting, but for now there’s no way to determine when the company will take the wraps off Samsung Cloud Together, or indeed, if the service will be announced by the end of the year.