The President of LG Electronics’ Home Appliance Division has announced at IFA its goal to become the top washing machine and refrigeration brand in Europe by 2015.
Speaking at Messe Berlin, Young-ha Lee, CEO of LG Electronics Home Appliance Company, said LG intends to capture 13 percent market share (sales amount based) in washing machines and 12.5 percent in refrigerators (sales amount based, excluding built-in refrigerators) in the region in four years.
Mr Lee said that, “The European market is highly competitive due to established local players in the home appliance industry. But LG is absolutely committed to being a brand that is embraced by European customers. We’re already ramping up our invest-ment in the region and have products on the drawing board that are based entirely on consumer insights from European audiences.”
A key part of LG’s strategy is to solidify the company’s image as a premium brand through its smart home appliance products. LG’s strengths are in energy savings and user convenience. These benefits are made possible by LG’s smart solutions the company calls Smart ThinQTM, which includes Smart Manager, Smart DiagnosisTM, Smart Access, Smart Adapt and Smart Grid.
We have some issues with this and, while to some it may seem like technological nirvana (including the people that came up with the idea) we don’t think that customers will go for it.
The flies in the ointment here are legion but a few are; do customers actually care or want connected appliances and, the history tends to indicate they don’t and, will people pay for a functionality that they don’t really need or want. Asides from which, from what we can see, much of the technologies being employed are proprietary and won’t interact with existing home control or automation systems so you would have to buy a house full of LG products to actually get the best out them. We have a funny feeling that UK consumers may shy away from that notion.
Smart Manager manages an inventory of food stored in your refrigerator but we suspect that like many this will rely heavily on user input and, users can’t be bothered.
LG’s Smart Di-agnosisTM feature helps customer service representatives to quickly and efficiently trou-bleshoot mechanical issues. This is interesting to us as service people but it’s a step on from the fault codes that we currently have and it does smack a bit of “Big Brother” as well as being dependent on some form of connection to the internet we would assume. Will people really want that and their products automatically reporting a fault?
Smart Access permits consumers to remotely control home appliances using mobile devices such as smartphones but until there is a way to get the washed laundry from the washing machine into the tumble dryer, what’s the point?
Smart Adapt recommends cooking instructions and wash cycles tailored to the consumers’ needs and we don’t have much information on this yet.
LG say that their Smart Grid system enables consumers to save energy costs by automatically reducing energy consumption during peak hours, without any input from the homeowner. But that’s not really the case as Smart Grid technologies don’t reduce the amount of power used, what it does is shift the time that the power is used to a cheaper tariff (Maybe, depending on your supplier and deal for power, it can cost more!) which is great news for your energy supplier trying to smooth out usage, not so wonderful for you and certanly not as “green” as the concept is painted to be.
LG will launch its smart home appliance products in Europe beginning with smart refrigerators in the United Kingdom (UK) at the end of this year. This will be followed by smart washing machines, smart ovens and smart robotic vacuum cleaners. LG’s smart clothing storage unit, Styler, will also make its appearance in European retailers.
LG also plans to increase its market share in the European built-in appliances market by cooperating at a deeper level with distribution partners and by introducing a line-up of more localised products in key European markets such as France, Spain, Italy and Germany.
As part of this aggressive strategy, LG is ramping up its European manufacturing opera-tions. LG’s plant in Wroclaw, Poland is expected to more than triple its production of refrigerators, expanding from the current 300,000 units annually to one million units. Its new washing machine assembly line in Poland is also targeting one million units a year. LG is looking into investing an additional USD 34 million by 2015 to further expand its European manufacturing facilities.
“These efforts are intended to meet European market demands sooner rather than later,” said LG’s Mr. Lee. “An increasing proportion of products supplying the European mar-ket will originate from European facilities instead of Korea and China.”