Samsung and Nestlé, two of the largest companies in their respective sectors, announced on Thursday plans to launch a connected health and lifestyle platform to encourage healthy choices.
The partnership also includes a joint research project to explore the benefits of nutritional science in conjunction with bio-sensors.
The specific details of the health platform were not disclosed, but Samsung wants to make it work on every device, from smart TVs to wearables. We assume the platform will be available on the two major platforms, iOS and Android, though that also wasn’t confirmed.
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“We are delighted to enter this collaboration with a global leader in the field of sensor technologies,” said Nestlé chief technology officer, Stefan Catsicas, to AFP. “It will advance our Nutrition, Health and Wellness strategy, to support people who want to live a healthier lifestyle.”
Nestlé moving beyond food production
Nestlé has reportedly started to focus more heavily on health and wellness, as its traditional food and drink business starts to stagnate. Bringing a health platform to market may improve its market penetration, though it didn’t give any details as to how it plans to make money from the arrangement.
“Today, we live in an era of smarter living brought about by the convergence of technology and life science,” said Samsung president and chief strategy officer, Young Sohn. “It’s an era where the data from smart sensors and devices in our daily life such as mobile phones, wearables, and smart refrigerators can help us to understand our nutrition and activity and to guide us towards a healthier lifestyle.”
From Sohn’s comments, the goal appears to be adding new functionality to Samsung’s appliances, which will require more tracking, to fundamentally understand a homeowner’s day-to-day lifestyle.
That may work for those willing to put their life into a database, but with the current privacy climate, it will be an uphill battle for Samsung to win consumer trust. Even then, do you really want Samsung and Nestlé knowing you binged watched seven episodes of House of Cards in a day or ate the same amount of KitKat’s during one episode?
