IOT WORLD, SAN FRANCISCO, May 12, 2015 – The President and Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Young Sohn has called on the technology industry to use the Internet of Things (IoT) to address major challenges the world faces today. He also emphasized the importance of open platforms and industry collaboration to accelerate development of new IoT applications and services.

“As an industry we must join together to use the power of IoT to address challenges posed by issues such as aging population demographics, water shortages, increasing traffic congestion, pollution and major health issues,” said Sohn. “We need to create powerful open platforms that will harness the information generated by IoT to develop new insights and new approaches to meet the challenges we face as a society.”

To enable faster deployment of IoT applications and services, Sohn announced the Samsung ARTIK™ platform. ARTIK is a production-ready, open platform that includes the hardware, software, development boards, drivers, tools, advanced security features and connectivity for rapidly building cloud-connected IoT devices. The ARTIK platform comes in a variety of configurations to meet the specific requirements of a wide range of IoT market segments from wearables and home automation, to smart lighting and industrial applications.

More information on the ARTIK platform can be found by visiting www.artik.io. SmartThings Founder and CEO Alex Hawkinson joined with Young Sohn during his keynote to introduce SmartThings Open Cloud. Open Cloud is powered by SAMI, a data driven development platform that Samsung announced last May that includes simple, open APIs and SDKs. The open platform is a cloud-based software layer that allows the sharing of diverse data sets from an unlimited number of sources. This vast amount of data, which previously would have been impossible to bring together, can then be broken up into smaller chunks for visualization and analysis.

SmartThings Open Cloud allows any device connected to the Internet to communicate with any other connected device, generating new information, new correlations and entirely new insights. It enables device makers to focus on building IoT devices and applications without having to build and maintain the cloud infrastructure required to connect those devices.

To demonstrate the potential for IoT to meet major societal challenges, Sohn also announced the Samsung ARTIK Challenge – offering a top prize of $100,000 for the most effective use of IoT and ARTIK technology for reducing water consumption by individuals or municipalities.

More information on the Samsung ARTIK Challenge can be found at ARTIK.challengepost.com.

Throughout his keynote address, Sohn underscored the importance of open platforms, security and an ecosystem of partners that are all necessary to accelerate the growth of IoT and achieve its full benefits. He was joined on stage by representatives of several startup companies Samsung is working with to develop technologies based on open platforms. In addition, the company announced that the Samsung ARTIK platform would be incorporated into future versions of Samsung digital appliances and that those appliances would also connect to the SmartThings Open Cloud.

About the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC)
SSIC is a global organization within Samsung’s Device Solutions division, with the core missions of open innovation in collaboration with entrepreneurs and strategic partners, investments in disruptive technologies and startups, and new business creation through M&A and partnerships. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, with offices in Korea, Israel and the U.K., SSIC’s focus areas include cloud infrastructure, digital health, Internet of Things, smart lighting, and smart machines.

About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative ideas and technologies, redefining the worlds of TVs, smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, cameras, digital appliances, printers, medical equipment, network systems, and semiconductor and LED solutions. We are also leading in the Internet of Things space through, among others, our Smart Home and Digital Health initiatives. We employ 307,000 people across 84 countries with annual sales of US $196 billion. To discover more, please visit our website at www.samsung.com and our official blog at global.samsungtomorrow.com.