Samsung Expands Smart Home Portfolio
Innovative new products and services make the Smart Home a reality

Samsung Electronics South Africa announces the expansion of its Smart Home portfolio. The new range of services and products are designed to increase home safety, improve energy management, adapt to in-home location and operate by voice command, demonstrating Samsung’s commitment to making the Smart Home of the future a reality today.

“We are excited to deliver a Smart Home experience which will make our customers’ lives easier, with innovative products that help everyone’s day to day routine, such as managing home security and energy consumption,” said Matthew Thackrah, Deputy MD of Samsung Electronics SA. “We are excited to be leading the way in making the Smart Home possible for our customers worldwide.”

The Samsung Smart Home places user convenience at the heart of its ethos. With the expansion of its Smart Home portfolio that includes third party devices, the service is designed to cater for all aspects of the modern smart home, from digital door locks to IP cameras and smart plugs. These devices combine with Samsung Electronics’ entire product offering to offer a complete Smart Home solution.

Samsung Smart Home – Enabling a Smarter Way of Living

Samsung’s safety services let users monitor the interior of the home by connecting digital door locks and IP cameras so that they can remotely and securely assess who is entering and exiting their home. For example, if the digital door lock is opened while the homeowner is away, a notification will be sent to the smartphone registered to that user. From here the Home View function can be launched on the companion mobile app to check the IP cameras and see whether other family members have returned home safely or if there is something to be concerned about.

Energy management is at the forefront of consumers’ minds. The Samsung Smart Home service monitors the amount of electricity used by energy intensive appliances such as air-conditioners and displays the expected cost of the energy consumption. Consumers can then monitor their electricity usage, whether daily or monthly and set new targets to help reduce bills. It is also possible to set a monthly maximum electricity allowance for each device and appliance and when the limit approaches a pop-up is sent to the customer.

New location awareness services enable devices in the home to automatically turn on via location recognition technology. For example, the lights and air conditioner will switch on automatically when the user approaches the home, meaning that they return to a comfort living environment.

The final newly announced service creates a more convenient home. People can activate the air conditioner, robot vacuum cleaner and Smart LED lights anytime, from anywhere through S Voice, the voice recognition service embedded in the wearable GEAR series as well as via GALAXY smartphones. Many detailed voice commands have been preloaded to allow the user to give specific instructions to a range of devices. Samsung plans to expand the compatibility of its Smart Home offering to products from other device and appliance manufacturers alongside additional Samsung products in order to create a seamless home experience.

Building an Open Smart Home Ecosystem

In July 2014, Samsung and Intel played an integral role in launching the Open Interconnect Consortium, which, alongside its founding members and future partners, aims to ensure connectivity standards. Samsung is pioneering work to make the connected home and by extension, the Internet of Things possible through work to shape industry standards concerning Smart Home services.

As part of Samsung’s continuous efforts to accelerate the growth of Samsung Smart Home ecosystem, Samsung will unveil the Smart Home SDK later this year which will enable partner companies to develop hardware devices supporting the Samsung Smart Home.

In addition, Samsung recently acquired SmartThings, creator of the leading open platform for the Smart Home and consumer Internet of Things. With resources and support from Samsung, SmartThings will continue to accelerate the development of a truly open ecosystem for connected homes. Samsung will also open its products to developers and partners on the SmartThings platform to help create exciting experiences for the connected home. More details will be shared at the Samsung Developer Conference to be held November 11-13 in San Francisco.

“We plan to build a truly open smart home ecosystem by actively incorporating a variety of services and platforms in the cloud, as well as by opening Samsung’s platform to developers,” explained Thackrah. “The Samsung Smart Home will continue to evolve through the development of new services that enable our customers to enjoy their lives in truly smart ways.”