Samsung Pushes Further Into Smart Home, Digital Healthcare And Virtual Reality At Developer Conference

Samsung Electronics kicked off its second annual developer conference with a bevy of announcements intended to ignite enthusiasm around its software for its wearable, digital health, virtual reality and smart home solutions.  At a time when the world's No. 1 smartphone maker is feeling more pressure in the smartphone market than ever from up-and-coming Chinese rivals like Lenovo and Xiaomi, the conference serves as a way for Samsung to both refocus and broaden its ambitions to be more than just a hardware company.

Samsung remains largely dependent on its partner Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), the purveyor of the Android platform that runs the vast majority of Samsung's phones. Thus far, with the exception of a few smart watches, Samsung and its partners have yet to make a splash in the market with the open-source Tizen platform.

Yet Samsung is undaunted and wants to reach out to developers and get them excited about building apps for Samsung products and even non-Samsung gadgets, and developing new services. "We believe in open platforms and strong partnerships, because together we can better serve our consumers," Samsung Media Solutions President Won-Pyo Hong said in his opening remarks at the conference, according to Re/code...