At a special Samsung Appliances and Smart Home Event during CES, The Architechnologist had the opportunity to speak with John Herrington, the Senior Vice President and General Manager Home Appliances for Samsung Electronics America. John shared a few insights into the future of the Internet of Things (IoT) and what role Samsung might play in the near future of our connected lives.

We asked John about the fairly unique position that Samsung finds itself in with SmartThings and the ever-growing family of connected devices. Now IoT has opened the door to talking to our stove, talking to our lights, someday soon talking to our fridge (like the Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator we helped announce at CES, Samsung’s Smart Refrigerator Is Cool). Will Samsung start to bring those pieces together? Is the Internet of Things going to start to touch all of these little bits and let them talk to each other (as it should have been doing all along)?

I think the big message that we keep coming back to … is that it has to provide real benefit.
And then light control and some of the things we’ve mentioned with SmartThings, it’s a very natural progression in terms of home control and home monitoring.
So I think the answer to the question is that it’s not frivolous innovation, but it’s innovation that people would say makes sense.
And so that’s what we are really focused on, it’s what are the pain points that consumers are having and then how can we bring this technology, in a beautiful package, to solve the problems?

Finally, we asked John how he saw all the things that Samsung touches (mobile phone, TV, appliances and more) tying together with SmartThings as the thread. Is that something that Samsung thinks is valuable, that every user is not the same?

You see the tremendous breadth of our product line. If someone is uniquely positioned to bring that real value across multiple categories and products in a way that consumers have a confidence and desire it is us. And so, we are laser-focused on bringing that.

Obviously, the Samsung and SmartThings team is not the only player in the Internet of Things field (Apple has HomeKit while Google has Brillo and Weave), but they do have an amazing advantage with a platform of their own and some of the most cutting edge technology available today.