Samsung is wooing developers in an effort to push its Galaxy smartphones and tablets, which have been popular with consumers, into the enterprise.
Samsung has released programming tools for the Galaxy devices to members of its Solutions Exchange, a program announced on Wednesday to help companies write and deploy mobile applications on Samsung smartphones and tablets.
The tools released include the Galaxy software development kit and 1,000 APIs (application programming interfaces), designed to enable developers to write applications that take advantage of features unique to Samsung’s latest Galaxy devices.
With the move, Samsung hopes developers will write applications tuned for the enterprise. For example, developers will be able to write applications that take advantage of the S-Pen, which is a stylus that allows users to take notes on Galaxy devices that support the feature.
The notes are recognized and digitized by the Galaxy devices, and can then be used in telephony, web or mapping applications. Samsung sees S-Pen as a key business tool, and has been wooing developers to write apps for that feature for more than a year.
Developers will also be able to write applications for newer Galaxy features like Air View and Air Gesture, which track hand and eye movement to perform functions on the mobile devices without touching the screen.
Take to work
Samsung is targeting those applications for its SAFE (Samsung for Enterprise) devices, which include the Samsung Galaxy S4 and S3 smartphones, Galaxy Note 2 and 3 “phablets”—hybrid phone and tablet devices—and Galaxy Note tablets. Samsung has customized the Android OS of the devices so enterprises can secure and manage them.
Samsung will also work directly with companies looking to implement specific applications. Samsung will help identify specific applications and technologies required by customers, and help them deploy the technology. Samsung also said it will work with third-party application developers and integrators to help meet customer requirements.