Newsletter
Samsung Electronics and Microsoft announced a new partnership at Mobile World Congress (MWC) on Monday. The two tech giants are looking to join forces to tackle the enterprise market with a range of new products and services designed to allow businesses to evolve their operations through digital technologies. Mobility is the key element of this new partnership seeing how Samsung and Microsoft said they’re looking to collaborate on developing new professional solutions suitable for on-the-go enterprise use.
At the core of this newly announced enterprise mobility partnership is the new Galaxy Book, a Samsung-made Windows 10 hybrid computer featuring software developed by both Microsoft and Samsung. The South Korean consumer electronics manufacturer revealed that the latest version of Samsung Flow supported by the Galaxy Book was created in close collaboration with Microsoft’s engineers, highlighting some of its new features like the ability to communicate with the Windows Hello authentication platform. As Samsung Flow allows users to receive notifications about text messages and calls on their Galaxy Book, Windows Hello will provide them with a quick option verify their identity before they’re allowed to see the contents of those notifications. Naturally, the functionality is entirely optional and can be disabled if a user prefers to do so. Samsung and Microsoft are also currently working on expanding the availability of Samsung Flow to more Windows 10 devices.
The two tech giants believe their new partnership should be interpreted as a sign that they desire to put their customers above anything else, including rivalries. While some recent speculation pointed to the two Galaxy Book models being experimental devices, the latest announcement by Samsung and Microsoft suggests that these 2-in-1 computers are just an early sign of things to come. The implications of this partnership are also significant on the part of Microsoft seeing how the company is currently selling its Surface Pro lineup that directly competes with Samsung’s new offerings. In fact, the Redmond-based tech giant is expected to unveil the Surface Pro 5 lineup as early as this spring, so the timing of its newly established partnership with Samsung seems somewhat unusual. Regardless, the collaboration isn’t likely to influence Samsung’s Android-powered devices like the Galaxy Tab S family seeing how Microsoft is primarily interested in promoting its own platform for enterprise applications instead of committing resources to competing solutions.