Bangalore: Samsung’s arm the Samsung Research & Development Institute in Bangalore (SRI-B) has completed 25 years of R&D in India.
On this milestone, Samsung said it is committed to powering Digital India with a refreshed R&D strategy. Under this R&D strategy, Samsung is engaging in cutting edge research that will transform communities, improve people’s and promoting a strong ecosystem of startups and academia.
Set up in 1996, SRI-B is Samsung’s largest R&D facility outside Korea. Over the years, the SRI-B has grown into an advanced R&D centre for Samsung globally. It’s main focus areas are wireless communications, multimedia and image processing, artificial intelligence (AI) in vision, voice and text technologies and Internet of Things (IoT).
Samsung said that over the next five years, SRI-B will explore in new research areas such as multi-device intelligence, beyond 5G, Blockchain and Data Science. And will continue innovations in camera technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G.
SRI-B has a strong culture of filing patents among its engineers over the last decade. Its engineers have filed over 3,200 patents so far. During the last three years, the number of patents filed annually has increased four times.
In this period, there has been an increase in Gen Z and Millennial engineers at SRI-B filing patents and around 80% of the patent creators were engineers and had first time filed patents in their careers.
It will also expand Open Innovation with startups, students and universities to help strengthen the innovation in the country.
It plans to scale up its industry-academia program PRISM. Under this program it has been working with engineering students and faculty on real-world R&D projects in cutting edge technology areas. It has worked with close to 500 Indian students, among which some students have even filed patents along with Samsung engineers.
It has been an incredible journey since 1996 as SRI-B has been Samsung’s pillar of strength, according to Dipesh Shah, MD, SRI-B.
“As we complete yet another milestone, we will focus on breakthrough innovations with our refreshed R&D strategy that will lead to the shaping of new global lifestyles inspired by India,” said Shah.
“We will grow sustainably as we will do our part to uplift the skill base of students especially in the Karnataka region through our unique CSR programs,” added Shah.
“Our biggest strength is our people and as we move ahead we will continue to focus on building up the skills of our in-house talent in cutting edge research and development areas,” he stated.
“Also empower thousands of students enrolled in our industry-academia initiative Samsung PRISM, as part of Samsung’s vision of Powering Digital India,” he further said.
Since its set up in 1996, SRI-B has worked on many cutting edge technologies and has had many firsts – 3G networks, the world’s first 4G, 5G networks, voice over LTE – and engineers at the centre have made significant contributions to Samsung Galaxy smartphones and Samsung networks.
SRI-B has been at the centre of developing local India-specific innovations, which has created a differentiation for Samsung smartphones in the Indian market, and these innovations have been loved by consumers.
It conducts consumer research every year to understand the growing needs of consumers in India, based on which engineers develop innovations that become part of smartphone products for the country.
A recent innovation that the centre developed is an On Device Search engine that helps people find their pictures and other content on smartphones easily using natural language search.