Samsung Electronics announced that it will support three of its current C-Lab (Creative Lab) projects as fully-fledged startups, with the goal of each company’s products and services going live by the first half of next year. The C-Lab, established at the end of 2012, is one of Samsung’s primary Innovation Programs, and helps its employees to nurture creative business ideas.

The three projects to be launched as startups are:

• TipTalk – a remarkable new UX that that can recognize sounds through body parts, with potential applications in the wearable device sector
• IoFIT – a new prototype ‘smart shoes solution’ that can correct a person’s gait and body posture, with potential applications in the healthcare and wellness sectors
• WalkON – a new app and mobile platform that makes walking more fun, by rewarding people with vouchers from brand partners when they achieve a target number of steps

“Samsung has always strived to both attract and support innovative talent, and provide them the opportunities they deserve to bring their ideas to life,” said Jaiil Lee, Vice President and Head of the Creativity and Innovation Center at Samsung Electronics. “Now, we want to go even further and invest in the vision of our entrepreneurial employees, helping them to start their own business journey.”

As nine employees from the startups leave Samsung, they will establish an independent company . Samsung will provide counsel by sharing its technology and management expertise with each company during the early stages of their business lifecycle, ensuring stable growth and guaranteeing the independence and freedom of each startup’s management team.

Employees also have the option to formally re-join Samsung.

Samsung believes that the initiative to turn the C-Lab projects into startups will further encourage staff to develop creative ideas. The C-Lab, which was founded to encourage and foster creative thinking and a creative culture throughout the company, has so far supported more than 100 projects.

Samsung Electronics announced its second year partnership with International Talent Support (ITS), a global platform and competition for young emerging creative talent, as well as this year’s Samsung Galaxy Award featuring the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge. Samsung and ITS are recognizing young talent and forces of fashion with creative vision, encouraging them to explore their creative ideas, and ultimately create a product or art piece that unites technology and fashion for a chance to receive the Samsung Galaxy Award. As a global innovator in mobile technology, Samsung is devoted to uniting the worlds of fashion and technology by leading the way in the development of tech products and user-experiences that seamlessly combine style with substance.

The Samsung Galaxy Award at the 2015 ITS competition will give young designers an opportunity to showcase their creative approach and design vision. Ten finalists will be selected from ITS FASHION, ITS ACCESSORIES, ITS JEWELRY, and ITS ARTWORK, and will be asked to develop proposals for two assignments: produce a new type of smartphone case for the Galaxy S6 or S6 edge with or without Swarovski crystals, and create a fashion item or art piece based on their design expertise, inspired by Galaxy S6 or S6 edge design or features. Ten prototypes will be chosen to be exhibited during the final round on July 10th and 11th. The best prototype will receive the Samsung Galaxy Award and a cash prize of €10,000.

“Samsung recognizes young designers and talent as critical forces of fashion that have the potential to create the next big thing in fashion-forward tech devices and accessories,” says Younghee Lee, Executive Vice President of Samsung Electronics Mobile Communication Division. “We are proud to support this innovative group and look forward to seeing the many ways that fashion and technology can unite to better improve our lives.”

The winner will be decided collectively by juries, including Younghee Lee, Executive Vice President of Samsung Electronics Mobile Communication Division along with some of the most influential Italian fashion journalists.

About International Talent Support
For fourteen years the mission of ITS has been that of giving space, visibility and support to young talents from all over the world and to provide them the opportunity of showcasing their creativity to the contest’s prestigious international judging panels composed of leading professionals in fashion, accessories, art and jewelry. ITS provides real support offering a selection of concrete awards and a vast array of job opportunities. ITS is a project conceived and developed by da EVE, presented by OTB, in collaboration with main partners YKK, SWATCH, SWAROVSKI.

“We are delighted to collaborate with Samsung on our NFV solution for SK Telecom’s IoT services,” said Jong-bong Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Network Division at SK Telecom. “SK Telecom is preparing for the IoT era through active business collaboration. Through the application of virtualized network technologies, we are confident that we can deliver a truly consistent and innovative network as well as superior service quality.”

The IoT network, driven by Samsung’s AdaptiV Core, is scheduled to go live  in the first half of 2015, and will see initial applications targeting package delivery tracking, CCTV monitoring and city-wide sensor monitoring.

“We are honoured that SK Telecom has selected Samsung as the sole vendor to support SK Telecom’s sophisticated mobile network,” said Youngky Kim, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. ”NFV is one of the core technologies of next-generation mobile networks and will play a critical role in helping telecom operators in terms of network deployment, management and operation as well as service efficiency and rapid scalability.”

Samsung successfully completed its virtualized EPC Proof of Concept (PoC) and subsequent trials with SK Telecom in late 2013, and was chosen by SK Telecom in 2015 for deployment in the mobile carrier’s dedicated network for IoT services.

Samsung’s AdaptiV Core scored the highest among vendors competing for the contract with SK Telecom, particularly in the areas of product performance, functionality, stability and ease of management. The solution emphasizes a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) and the ability to easily manage virtualized resources.

Samsung’s AdaptiV Core

Samsung’s AdaptiV Core includes a virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC), which runs on a KVM-based hypervisor on a common server hardware platform, and Samsung’s CognitiV Cloud Manager System.

The vEPC will be responsible for managing traffic to and from IoT-type devices, leveraging its ability to scale network functions as needed to provide a dynamic balance of capacity, performance, power consumption and resource availability. The CognitiV Cloud Manager will be responsible for managing this process, keeping track of available resources and network load, while also providing SK Telecom with a powerful and straightforward interface with which to customize the behaviour of each Virtualized Network Function (VNF). It will also determine network status and easily manage hardware resources as needed.

Samsung’s LTE solutions are supported by over 30 years of experience and leadership in developing and commercializing telecom technologies. With years of proven field experience in LTE technologies, Samsung has successfully partnered with dozens of mobile service providers, facilitating the implementation of the most advanced LTE networks available on the market today.