Samsung Developer Conference 2014
Samsung Electronics held the second annual Samsung Developers Conference in San Francisco from Nov. 11 to 13 (local time), and unveiled a variety of new platform and hardware technologies in smart homes, the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality, healthcare, and more.
First of all, it unveiled the Samsung Smart Home Platform, on which a limitless number of smart home applications can be created to control Samsung home appliances and be tweaked to control those of the others. This implies that Samsung Electronics has set out to build an ecosystem comparable to the IT platforms of Google and Apple by ensuring the participation of application developers, consumer electronics manufacturers, and smart home service providers.
The Media Solution Center (MSC) of the company opened its location-based software developer kit (SDK) to the public so as to help create a new ecosystem in business-to-business (B2B) transactions. The tool, dubbed Place Edge, allows mobile terminals within a designated area to be detected before the automatic transmission and reception of diverse types of information and data.
The Samsung Digital Health Platform and the Samsung Digital SDK attracted the attention of many, too. The company also unveiled the SAMIIO, a tool for real-time collection and analysis of human bio-signals, and the wearable sensor module Simband as parts of the platform.
The omni-directional, three-dimensional camera Project Beyond, in the meantime, works with the world’s first virtual reality headset Samsung Gear VR to show virtual reality images in front of users' eyes. Samsung Electronics is planning to release the Gear VR next month and work with more visual and game content developers so as to take the initiative in the industrial segment.
Samsung Electronics unveiled dozens of developer kits in 12 segments, five more than in 2013, at this year’s conference. The number of participants was approximately 3,000, more than double the previous year.