Samsung has announced that it is acquiring Internet of Things startup, SmartThings, for $200 million. SmartThings is famous in manufacturing apps and products to control different appliances remotely. Bloomberg’s Betty Liu reported the news in a program on Bloomberg and said that Samsung has taken this step to battle Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL). Samsung’s latest acquisition is seen as an effort to tackle Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s penetration in the Internet of Things segment. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has been investing in cars, home automation and wearables in the recent past, one of the latest acquisitions being home automation company Nest, which is SmartThings’ competitor.
The SmartThings team is currently based in Washington but after the deal, it will move to Palo Alto, California. The company has said that its name will remain the same and it will continue to do business in its separate entity.
“We will continue to run SmartThings the way we always have: by embracing our community of customers, developers, and device makers and championing the creation of the leading open platform for the smart home. Our growing team will remain fully intact and will relocate to a new headquarters in Palo Alto, CA. In short: SmartThings will remain SmartThings,” said a statement issued by SmartThings.
Earlier this year, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) bought home automation company “Nest” in order to grab web enabled home automation, a hot domain of Internet of Things. Samsung now has an Internet of Things company in its hand. SmartThings said that they are excited about working with Samsung and the company will get a chance to leverage Samsung’s global scale and exposure to build colossal products.
“It has always been our goal to create a totally open smart home platform that brings together third-party developers, device makers, and consumers. We’re thrilled that Samsung fully supports this vision,” the statement added.
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