The smart home is a very attractive niche for many manufacturers. If you launch one product for this market, you have to offer more in the future. This is the rule that any manufacturer should follow to, otherwise, it will appear out of the competition. This is another reason why small companies (or companies with little capabilities and power) do not enter this niche. But what about the top brands? It turns out they are not asleep. Say, recently Samsung launched three new products from SmartThings series. They include an IP camera, a light bulb, and a socket.
The Verge reports the SmartThings Cam costs $89.99, the SmartThings Wifi Smart Plug costs $17.99, and the SmartThings Smart Bulb is available at $9.99. The new products work within the SmartThings ecosystem and are available starting today.
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They also support Amazon Assistant, Google Assistant and Samsung’s own Bixby voice assistant. At the same time, the Smart Things smart camera supports HDR full HD video recording, infrared night vision, two-way audio, human detection, and a 145-degree field of view. It supports 24-hour cloud storage backup (up to 4 cameras).
The SmartThings Wifi Smart Plug is a regular smart plug that is small enough to allow two plugs to be mounted on the same wall outlet. The Smart Bulb is a simple 9-watt smart LED light bulb with 806 lumens of rated output. It has a warm white color (2700K), and can also support the lights dimming.
The SmartThings platform works with over 600 compatible devices from 60 different companies.
Apart from these three new products, Samsung announced that they are still committed to SmartThings as a platform. So they are not going to stop working with third-party partners anytime soon. In fact, SmartThings was originally launched in 2012 before being acquired by Samsung in 2014. It was working as a centralized hub to link various smart home appliances from different brands together, manage them, and build automations with them. Now, it acts as the backbone of Samsung’s smart home ecosystem.
