South Korea’s Samsung bought a start-up company SmartThings, letting out controllers for smart homes . The transaction value was not announced, but informed sources said Re / code, that the purchase of Samsung SmartThings cost at about $ 200 million.
Founder and CEO SmartThings Alex Hawkinson will continue to lead the company, which, according to Samsung, will continue to operate independently, although its headquarters with 55 employees will move from Washington to Palo Alto (CA) to be part of the Open Innovation Center (Open Innovation Center) Samsung. Division, which is headed by the former head of Google and AOL David Eun, has been developing innovative services and applications.
In an interview with Re / code Mr. Hawkinson said that the deal with Samsung will help SmartThings scale your business to the whole world, using ready-made retail channels.Company will enter the multimillion-dollar market, and its products will be available to a greater number of developers.
As a startup Oculus VR, which recently bought the social networking site Facebook for $ 2 billion, SmartThings debuted on kraudfandingovom site Kickstarter in 2012. Since its inception the company has consolidated more than 15 million dollars of investment.
For the first time the possibility of transaction between SmartThings and Samsung has been known in the past month due to resource TechCrunch. Then startup negotiated with several companies.
The deal is part of a broader transformation in home automation. So, at the beginning of this year, Google bought the manufacturer of smart thermostats Nest for $ 3.2 billion, and a few months later his vision of the smart home showed Apple.
SmartThings is committed to producing and selling 200-dollar sets of Wi-Fi router and a small adhesive sensors that are connected to the household electrical appliances. Connected devices can be controlled with applications for iOS or Android.
It is important to note that SmartThings – is not just a set for the smart home, and an open platform (apparently it has attracted Samsung), which allows everybody to create new applications for the system SmartThings. According to Hawkinson, sales SmartThings devices constantly increasing, and the number of applications for them increases.
The system of “smart home” is part of the Internet of Things, which involves the interaction of objects of the real and virtual worlds in a single network. The idea is that a lot of inanimate objects with a wireless connection to the Internet can be controlled by a single mobile application. Sensors SmartThings, in turn, help to unite all the objects in a home network by the user, and change the wiring and to seek professional help is needed.
Given the scale of the Samsung and its desire to expand the scope of their devices, the purchase of SmartThings is logical. Expanding the functionality of smartphones, especially against the background of falling sales, will help Samsung to revive the market.
Samsung, meanwhile, is promoting their own solutions for the smart home, producing home appliances and electronics with an Internet connection . The link here is the operating system Tizen. Yong and Hawkinson believe that technology SmartThings open more opportunities for Samsung.
