Samsung is opening its smart home platform to third parties

Samsung is plotting an expansion to its Smart Home platform, opening up the service to make it work with third-party technology. Ahead of IFA 2014, a major tech trade show that kicks off this week in Berlin, the South Korean smartphone-maker says you’ll be able to activate air conditioners, robot vacuum cleaners and smart LED lightbulbs via its S Voice voice-recognition tech on your Galaxy smartphone, or Samsung smartwatch. Smart Home is Samsung’s attempt at taking control of your house — and everything in it — connecting all your tech on a single network, making it theoretically simpler for you to control your appliances. With Apple revealing its HomeKit technology earlier this year, there’s plenty of focus on how tech will infiltrate our homesteads — and Samsung doesn’t want us to forget that its also in the mix. Several weeks ago Samsung acquired open smart-home platform SmartThings, and in July became part of Thread, a consortium of companies aimed at creating standards for connected device technology. Unfortunately, however, Samsung hasn’t mentioned any specific third-party products or services that are going to be added to its Smart Home portfolio, instead making reference to futuristic scenarios like locking your door and monitoring security cameras from your smartphone, checking how much electricity is being used by your appliances, or using geolocation to turn on your lights and air-con.