00:01 Kristen
Welcome back to NYSE Live. Samsung is partnering with Bark to deliver a child safety focused smartwatch.
00:10 Kristen
Well joining me now with more is Tyler Gibson, SVP and general manager of B2B mobility at Samsung Electronics America. Tyler, great to have you on the show this morning, an important topic and timely one as we head into the holidays. Why did Samsung decide to partner with Bark on this endeavor?
00:30 Tyler Gibson
Sure, so absolutely. Thanks, Kristen. We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with Bark to create their next generation Bark watch for kids.
00:43 Tyler Gibson
We’ve done that in a very purposeful way by integrating their award-winning software with our flagship hardware. It’s very different than just an app add-on. It’s natively integrated into the OS and it really helps bridge that dilemma parents make on the first device they give their kids to be connected between no device and a full smartphone device. And so effectively what we’ve done is created a solution allows for talk, text, GPS location, SOS, but eliminates any social media open browsers that a parent wouldn’t want their kids to have access to while still being connected.
01:05 Kristen
And why do you think Samsung is the right hardware platform for Bark?
01:12 Tyler Gibson
Yeah, I think Samsung’s the right hardware platform and partner platform and the reason I say that is from a hardware perspective, we we offer world-class hardware, but one of our key tenants of our overall go-to market pillar is to work with our partners to integrate their software on top of that hardware in a co-engineering effort so that they can create the experience and deliver the solution they want for their customers. So win, win, win for all of us. us, Bark and our ultimate end customer. And it also brings an ecosystem that helps acquire and graduate their customers through the Bark kids life cycle.
01:52 Kristen
What does this partnership signal about Samsung’s commitment to mobile security?
02:03 Tyler Gibson
Yeah, listen, security is core to Samsung’s DNA always has been. We refer to it as Samsung Knox. It’s a software you’ll see loaded on all our mobile devices, TVs and other things that we issue. Knox is used around the world in Fortune 500s and governments alike. We’re now extremely proud to bring that to families and kids alike. And not only does it secure the device, it’s also how we work with Bark and other partners to integrate their software through a Knox manage so that they can create a curated, customized Bark experience out of the box so that parents don’t have to go in and mess around with settings and make sure they did it right. It just it provisions itself, standalone watch, uh Bark experience combined with our messaging.
02:46 Kristen
What makes this collaboration different from other parental control solutions that are available on the market?
02:56 Tyler Gibson
Yeah, I think a couple things. Um the I think the current market parents face a choice of if I want to sort of be able to track my child and know where they are. Do I buy a cheap tracker or something that’s more toy kid oriented um or do I give a full smartphone and then worry about every day have I put the right controls in place to to to limit their access to maybe harmful material. This provides them a premium watch, one you and I’d wear to the gym every day. so it’s built to withstand the day in and day out uh you know, toughness of a kid. But again, it also provides a standalone mode to operate in in a very secured and procured environment that allows just talk and text uh and secured as well. And so I think we’ve kind of bridge that gap and helped uh families make an easier decision on the first connected device that they give their children.
03:40 Kristen
Interesting. So I I’m curious to dive a little bit deeper into that why partnerships like these are increasingly important as mobile device adoption among younger users grows.
03:52 Tyler Gibson
Yeah, I think that I think that’s it. technology is more prevalent than ever. Uh parents are faced with decisions every day of how do I connect my device. Being a parent myself, I like to make sure I know where my children are. I like to make sure I can communicate with them. yet. I don’t want them to have full access to everything that that I haven’t, uh, you know, given them access to. And so by partnering with Bark, they’ve done an amazing job of their software as well as awareness on how to help families give that first connected device to their children in a very safe and secure manner. And so I think um as an industry as a whole, we need to make sure that technology is adopted safely and security, but that we graduate our children through kind of that cycle of letting them use more and more and more as they get comfortable with it. And then maybe the last thing on the partnerships is something that we borrowed from the rest of our kind of our go-to-market business of where we do partner with a lot of our partners to create custom solution sets on our devices, not just watch, phone, tablet, PC, etcetera.
04:47 Kristen
Mhm. What is the feedback that you’ve received so far?
04:52 Tyler Gibson
Yeah, the feedback’s been great both from parents and kids alike. One of the, um, one of the big things parents were asking Bark for was talk to text, as you can imagine, right? It giving a child a connect advice, let’s let’s say under eight years old, it’s much easier to talk to that device and have that device talk to you versus have to type in on that little watch face and so we’ve we’ve effectively delivered that with Bark. And then kids love the love the watch, right? It’s it’s not just a kid’s watch, it’s a flagship premium watch that again, you and I would wear to the gym or out. And so now kids can uh uh acquire that watch early and keep that watch for many years to come and not feel like they’ve outgrown the sort of toy form factor.
05:32 Kristen
What do you think differentiates Samsung in the smartphone market?
05:38 Tyler Gibson
Yeah, and specifically in the B to B space, which I’m responsible for, one of the things that differentiates us a lot is a broad portfolio but an open ecosystem that we work with our partners to deliver. I’ll give you another example, you had another one of our partners very on maybe six months ago and they operate in the clinical trial and research space. Same watch, same sort of motion around opening up the watch and the OS, but they integrate their software to deliver clinical trial and research solutions to their partners. And so that’s what really differentiates us in the B2B space and it’s really exciting to be able to partner with our partners to deliver sort of joint outcomes for our customers.
06:17 Kristen
Tyler Gibson, SVP and General Manager of B2B mobility at Samsung Electronics America. Tyler, thanks so much.
06:26 Tyler Gibson
Thanks Kristen.