Samsung is open for business-to-business.

There were plenty of new consumer gadgets and hardware releases as part of the Samsung Developer Conference this week in San Jose, California, but the company’s decision to devote the entire second-day keynote session for its business-to-business initiatives was a clear indication that this will be an important market for the Korean mobile tech giant.

The session was led, over the course of nearly two hours, by Taher Behbehani (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of mobile B2B. Behbehani was hired by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. a little over a year ago after a series of executive leadership roles at major corporations, including BroadSoft, BlackBerry, American Express and Time Warner Cable.

In an exclusive interview with SiliconANGLE following his keynote presentation on Wednesday, Behbehani added detail to what he and Samsung were seeing in the enterprise market as the company gears up its B2B initiatives.

AR on the rise

For starters, augmented reality is beginning to gain major traction. That may come as a surprise to some, in light of recent evidence that the mobile virtual reality headset market appears to have gone into deep hibernation.

Yet industrial use cases are apparently fueling renewed interest, enough to move Samsung to quietly file a recent patent application for an unannounced AR headset. “AR is finally happening,” Behbehani told SiliconANGLE. “I sense it, I see it.”

Another key development from Samsung’s perspective is that companies are, in Behbehani’s words, “breaking out.” Much of this is being driven by the rise of application developers as a force for enterprise innovation, creating agile use cases representing a whole new business model for many companies.

During his keynote session, Behbehani highlighted the work of Samsung customer Medtronic plc., the world’s largest medical device company. Medtronic has partnered with Samsung to help 150,000 patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease manage their deep brain stimulation implants using a customized mobile device.

“What if you controlled it with a smartphone?” Behbehani told SiliconANGLE. “That’s breakout.”

Eye on security

While companies may be breaking out, they are also doing everything possible to keep digital criminals from breaking in. In today’s era of bring-your-own-device to work, Samsung has tailored its Knox security layer to help enterprise employees access work-related apps safely from Android-based phones.

Knox is clearly an important element for Samsung’s evolving B2B strategy. Last week, Samsung officially launched its new Galaxy Enterprise Edition, a range of mobile devices all equipped with Knox features which enable businesses to set controls over apps and other mobile content in the workplace, isolating them from personally used features. Samsung also announced a new Knox Partner Program aimed at enterprise developers as a way to obtain application validation for properly implemented Knox APIs.

The company’s latest moves with Knox indicate an interest in helping facilitate safeguards for businesses that may not have a dedicated leader for information protection, while countering concerns around the security strength of the Android platform in work environments.

“A chief information security officer doesn’t exist in many companies,” Behbehani told SiliconANGLE. “Knox does make Android safe.”

Listening to partners and developers

One of the philosophies articulated by Behbehani and other Samsung executives at this year’s SDC gathering could be boiled down to three words: We are listening.

In addition to conversations with developers and customers, Samsung has formed an industry advisory board that provides feedback on a variety of topics. The input offers insight into the issues enterprises are facing today, and it helps shape Samsung’s B2B strategy, according to Behbehani.

“They’re intimate friends, we sit there without facilitation,” Behbehani told SiliconANGLE. “We do have a different engagement model. We listen a lot more.”

In the end, the feedback that may matter most could be what Behbehani hears from the developer community in response to his efforts to steer Samsung toward a greater B2B role. Asked about what feedback he had been hearing from developers during this week’s gathering in San Jose, Behbehani indicated that it ran the gamut, from “Wow, you guys are nice because you listen” to “Gee, I didn’t know you existed.”

It’s the latter remark that Behbehani is trying to change, and this week’s B2B coming-out party for Samsung represents an important step for the company in that direction.

Photo: Samsung