Google hired Injong Rhee (pictured), Samsung’s recently departed Mobile Communications CTO, to head up its IoT business.

In a post on his LinkedIn page Rhee, who departed Samsung in December 2017, revealed he was joining Google as an Entrepreneur in Residence, a role which will see him lead the company’s IoT business. He will report to Diane Greene, CEO of Google Cloud and board member of Google parent Alphabet.

Rhee said in the post he aims to harmonise the company’s “many IoT related products and assets”, and grow “Google IoT into a sustainable and profitable business line”.

“One of the first things I would like to do with my Google colleagues is to get these efforts coordinated and aligned towards a concerted IoT story of Google – [and] in the process create distinct consumer and enterprise product lines,” he said.

Rhee comes into the role after almost seven years at Samsung, where he served as SVP of enterprise business, EVP of enterprise business and m-commerce and, most recently, as CTO of its Mobile Communications business and head of R&D software and services. He is credited with playing a key role in developing Samsung’s security platform Knox, as well as Samsung Pay, the company’s mobile payments service, and the Bixby voice assistant.

Google, like major rivals including Amazon and Microsoft, has been placing added focus on IoT and in 2017 introduced its Google Cloud IoT Core service. The platform is designed to help companies interconnect more devices and manage the data they generate in a centralised location using Google’s cloud and analytics services.