Samsung buys SmartThings to boost its connected home potential

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Samsung has acquired “Internet of Things” company SmartThings in an apparent US$200 million (£120 million) deal, seemingly in an attempt to boost its smart home, er, smarts.

SmartThings, based in California’s Silicon Valley, makes an app and Hub that allows the user to control hundreds of smart home devices – light switches, locks, thermostats etc. – from his or her smartphone.

Smart home for all?

The acquisition will see SmartThings remain an independent company operating within Samsung’s Open Innovation Center group, and SmartThings claims on its blog that it will continue to push for an open smart home platform – in other words, it won’t just be making devices compatible with Samsung smartphones and tablets.

The blog post says the company’s goal is to “support all of the leading smartphone vendors, devices and applications … and help many more people around the world easily control and monitor their homes using SmartThings” and it believes its new partnership with Samsung will help achieve that.

SmartThings isn’t the first smart home company to be snapped up by a tech giant. In January 2014, smart thermostat and smoke alarm maker Nest was acquired by Google for a whopping US$3.2 billion. The connected home and the Internet of Things, it seems, are destined to become one of the next big technology battlegrounds.

[Source: SmartThings]

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Tech journalism's answer to The Littlest Hobo, I've written for a host of titles and lived in three different countries in my 15 years-plus as a freelancer. But I've always come back home to Stuff eventually, where I specialise in writing about cameras, streaming services and being tragically addicted to Destiny.