The Six Five team discusses the deal between Samsung and WalMart to give all WalMart associates a free Samsung Smartphone as they roll out a new app for employees.
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Transcript:
Daniel Newman: And I will probably only have a few things to add, but big week, this week for our friends at Samsung big win, tell a little bit about this Walmart deal.
Patrick Moorhead: Yeah. So I think most of us consider Samsung Mobile, a consumer play, right? It’s hard not to with the best camera in the industry with the S21, with kind of lower end lower priced devices that it has, but it has a very robust commercial business. And a lot of that is due to Knox Security, which Samsung calls defense raid security that they harden their Android with. And they also have special designs, for instance, you can throw against the wall that are hardened. Try to do that with your iPhone, by the way. Hardened against getting beaten up and having water poured on them or having dust. Their tablets, they even have a tablet line that has replaceable batteries, which if you’re a police department and you don’t want to put something on a charger and just want to change the battery in it, it’s a much better solution.
So, day one, to my knowledge, the largest mobile deal I have ever heard of with Walmart’s 740,000 XCover Pro smartphones. And not only can what Walmart calls associates, they can use them at work for scheduling, clocking in, using push to talk, “Hey, I’m out of maple syrup on aisle 17. Can you check the back for me?” And also they’re integrating this thing called Ask Sam, which is a voice assistant, which is, “Hey, Sam, can you tell me if we have any maple syrup available under this brand?” And it will basically come back and tell you things like stocking right on the XCover Pro, has an optional QR code reader that when you want to do a cycle count and see, okay, that computer tells me I have 10 life rafts over here, and is it actually there, you can scan it.
So, that’s pretty cool. So when it comes to a frontline worker use, and there’s actually more workers can actually use these at home for their own personal devices as well. So, hats off to Samsung for this, and also hats off to Walmart for giving its associates a really cool phone that literally you could throw against the wall and it will still keep taking it. I think this is a really cool implementation of not only frontline workers that you and I have been researching so much, but also the ability to attract employees. Right? You get a free phone if you’re a Walmart associate.
Daniel Newman: Yeah. I think that you can’t under estimate the value pack in companies starting to outfit more of their teams with valuable technology. I mean, look, high-end phones and laptops have long been something that if you’re a knowledge worker would be part of the gig, but a lot of people working in frontline type jobs didn’t get these devices. So, when these ere initially brought into the limelight, I remember, I think the rollout of this thing was at NRF a couple of years back, I was in New York for that, when they rolled out the partnership announced these new devices, they also did a pretty interesting partnership with Microsoft Teams if I recall with these devices. But I mean, I remember a lot of the positioning being, they would be devices that can be shared. Multiple employees would kind of come in and out log in and out and use them.
What I really like here is seeing that the company is seeing the value in giving these to every employee. To me, it feels like a bigger commitment and it’s really good to see kind of how this is going to work in the wild in such a tremendously large use case Pat, so big win for Samsung Business. One of those use cases, I think we’re all kind of waiting to see, could they close a deal this big? Was it going to get past like the doc? I still remember the era of the Nextel, and this is kind of that thing for the modern frontline worker. And now, instead of having just a phone with a walkie talkie, though, they literally have a super computer in their pocket that can do everything in anything, and by the way, it can carry on so they can take it home and TikTok and Snapchat and do all the other good stuff.
Good one there, Pat. Good catch. Good story. Congratulations, Samsung. Walmart, I’m sure I’ll see you soon for something.
Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
