Las Vegas – Partnerships and bringing a level of humanism to consumer
technology were the focuses of Samsung Electronics’ Boo-Keun Yoon’s keynote Thursday.
Yoon, president of Samsung’s
visual display business, invited a bevy of CEOs to his stage to
discuss how their companies are working to not only make Samsung’s wide variety
of products more interactive, but to bring about what he called a level of “human digitalism.”
On the content-delivery side of the business, Yoon had Comcast
CEO Brian Roberts and Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt discuss how their companies
were helping bring content to products beyond the TV.
Each gave brief demonstration of their programming playing on a Galaxy
Tab via an app.
“We’re radically changing how consumers interact with their
televisions, whether they are watching on a big screen or small screen,” Roberts
said.
Britt said Time Warner has worked with Samsung to develop TVs
that will use a subscription service to show cable content without the need for
a set-top box.
Jason Kilar, Hulu’s CEO, came on stage to say Hulu’s partnership will
result in Hulu Plus programming becoming available on Samsung Android phones in
the near future.
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen spoke of the importance of including Flash capability on Smart TVs, so users can enjoy a full web experience.
Toward this end, Yoon said this collaboration will result in Samsung TVs supporting Flash.
The final CEO on hand was DreamWorks Jeffery Katzenberg.
He said his animation studio exclusively uses Samsung TVs in its
work and that Samsung and DreamWorks are extending their relationship to allow
Samsung to use certain DreamWorks characters in its upcoming marketing programs.
In addition, some DreamWorks engineers will work directly with
Samsung to create a better product, with particular interest being paid to 3D,
Katzenberg said.
