Samsung says IoT will drive semiconductor sales
Samsung will secure more market share than its rivals in the expanding Internet of Things (IoT) market by increasing its competence in semiconductors, a senior executive has said.
The company will also add value by providing more complete solutions needed for the IoT, especially security and the cloud.
Byung-se So, EVP, Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center, said during a company investors forum in Seoul that IoT will lead the semiconductor market going forward and talked up the firm's ARTIK module.
Samsung commercially launched the module in February this year. It introduced the ARTIK Cloud in April, adding cloud support for customers.
The world's semiconductor market is growing 7 percent per year while IoT will account for 25 percent, the company said. Samsung intends to secure 53 percent of the IoT hardware market by the year 2020 by putting its chip in 6.6 billion devices in smart home, smart building, distribution, healthcare, and transportation, it added.
The company's competitors such as Intel and Qualcomm are also offering System-on-a-Chip (SoC), said So, but they required individual optimisation by developers. ARTIK also offers ecosystems, from software and security to cloud, which gives it "additional value".
The EVP said around 97 percent of Samsung's chips were optimised for IoT, and admitted it was 2 to 3 percent behind its rivals in that area, but the support of the whole ecosystem made up for its deficiencies.
For countless devices to transmit data back and forth, cloud was a requisite, he said, and IoT vendors without it will fall behind.
Samsung last week announced that it was buying US cloud vendor Joyent. Injong Rhee, CTO of the firm's mobile business, told ZDNet that the acquisition was to fill the firm's cloud need and said it will be applied to its other businesses "in the not so distance future".