Samsung

Samsung has bought SmartThings, the startup that makes smart-home controllers. While the companies did not disclose the price, sources said the South Korean consumer electronics giant paid about $200 million. SmartThings will continue to be run by CEO and founder Alex Hawkinson and operate independently, Samsung said. But most of its operations — which now Continue Reading →

This was not the usual Samsung smartphone launch. The Galaxy Alpha, one of two high-end smartphones that Samsung has been teasing this summer, made a quiet debut early Wednesday. Samsung announced the phone in a press release posted on its website. While the Galaxy Alpha had the usual run-up of rumors and speculation befitting any Continue Reading →

Apple and Samsung are making peace — at least outside the United States. In a surprise move late Tuesday, the two companies said they were dropping all litigation outside the country. “Samsung and Apple have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States,” the two companies said in a joint Continue Reading →

Samsung’s streaming internet radio service Milk has been free of advertising since its launch, though as part of a new update has added the option to pay to skip more tracks and download music to play without an internet connection. The new “premium service” runs $3.99 a month, and upgrades users from six song skips Continue Reading →

Google and Samsung are reportedly at odds once again. According to The Information, Google CEO Larry Page is unhappy that Samsung is pushing Tizen as its chosen smartwatch platform. Apparently joining LG in the retail launch of Android Wear wasn’t enough to satisfy Page. The report describes a “tense private meeting” between Google’s leader and Continue Reading →

Google has Nest, Apple has HomeKit and Samsung has…SmartThings, we’re hearing. The deal was completed for around $200 million dollars, though it might have been less according to one source. (Update: The deal is not done yet, says another.) SmartThings is in the home automation space, and allows you to connect devices like lights and Continue Reading →

Samsung, ARM, Nest and four other companies have gotten together to build a new radio standard for the smart home. Dubbed Thread, it is a low-power, mesh network protocol that also supports IPv6. The standard is built on the existing radio hardware used by ZigBee devices (802.15.4), which means that a company could update its Continue Reading →

Samsung is planning to launch a new, high-end smartphone next month that will be designed to take on the iPhone 6, according to reports out of Korea. Over the weekend, Korean publication ETNews reported that Samsung is working on a device known as the Galaxy Alpha that it plans to launch in August. Samsung wants Continue Reading →

There’s yet another tech industry group focused on the internet of things in town. Samsung has partnered with Atmel, Broadcom, Dell, Intel and Intel-owned Wind River to launch the Open Interconnect Consortium, an organization aiming to create engineering standards to help electronic devices ‘talk’ to one another — e.g. controlling your Samsung fridge from an Continue Reading →

Samsung’s marketing budget has always been vast, but in the last quarter it was far larger than even the manufacturer itself would have liked. The company admits that it’s been forced to spend extra money on promotions for older and lower-end devices that have been filling up its warehouses due to “weak demand.” This dip Continue Reading →