UK-based telecom giant Vodafone has announced an exclusive partnership with Samsung to develop IoT products and services. The telecom will integrate its smart home service V-Home by Vodafone, and consumer IoT system V by Vodafone, with Samsung’s SmartThings platform.
Samsung SmartThings Wi-Fi hub will be the control center of the V-Home service, and makes its first debut in the European market in Spain and Germany in the second quarter of 2018. In addition to the control hub, the starter kit of V-Home also includes SmartThings Security Camera, Multipurpose Sensor, Siren and Vodafone’s alerting service V-Home Alarm Assistant.
V-Home sends alerts to customers’ smartphones when there is a home intrusion. In addition, it offers home automation control including voice assistant. The alarm service doesn’t only send app notifications to users’ phones, but also SMS messages, automated outgoing phone calls and another alerts to users’ contacts within 15 minutes of an alert being triggered.
Vodafone plans to expand this home service in 2018, adding more products from the SmartThings such as smart lighting, thermostats and speakers, which are under the umbrella of Works with SmartThings program.
Other regional markets in Europe to welcome V-Home service will be announced during 2018.
The partnership is undoubtedly a good news for the Korean company. With Vodafone’s presence across the European continent, Samsung can extend user base of the SmartThings platform and its own smart home appliance sales as well.
Catching up the trending voice assistant, Samsung’s SmartThings already supports Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, as well as Samsung’s own assistant Bixby.
Moreover, the company has just officially announced that the smart speaker powered by Bixby is expected to hit the market in the second half of this year. Bixby hasn’t had great feedback after its launch last year, but the assistant could play a more important role to natively control devices on the Samsung SmartThings platform.