Samsung has acquired SmartThings, a company that builds and sells products for smart homes. According to TechCrunch, Samsung paid around $200 million for the home automation company. SmartThings got its start on Kickstarter, where it raised over $1.2 million.
This is a big win for Samsung, which has a number of home appliances that can be integrated with the excellent home-automation app that SmartThings has built. The South Korean conglomerate already has a home-automation app, but it pales in comparison to what SmartThings has built.
SmartThings offers a collection of devices and sensors that can turn your house into an easy-to-manage smart home. You can turn lights on and off, get notified when someone comes home, unlock and lock your doors remotely, and even get a notification if you have a leak in your house.
The deal comes on the heels of acquisitions and announcements from Google and Apple—Samsung’s two biggest competitors—in the home-automation field.
As the Internet of Things continues to grow, managing a plethora of Internet-connected devices around our homes will become more pertinent. With Google’s recent acquisition of Nest, Apple’s development of HomeKit, and Samsung bringing in SmartHome, the three biggest players in the industry each have their own homegrown solution to manage the incoming devices that will populate your home.
In a blog post announcing the acquisition, SmartThings Founder and CEO Alex Hawkinson noted that despite becoming part of a company as large as Samsung, SmartThings will retain its identity, and its 55-member team. “Our growing team will remain fully intact and will relocate to a new headquarters in Palo Alto, CA. In short: SmartThings will remain SmartThings.”
H/T Recode | Photos via SmartThings