As global home appliance manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics begin to collaborate in earnest to control third-party devices with their own apps, expectations are rising that a truly smart home, including energy management, will be realized.

Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics each issued press releases on the 29th, stating that they will control products from global home appliance companies such as LG Electronics, Vestel, and Sharp with Samsung Electronics' SmartThings app, and promote interconnection between home appliances with global major home appliance companies such as Samsung Electronics and Turkish home appliance company Vestel through LG Electronics' LG ThinQ.

The two companies are working together with the goal of linking home appliances within the year, and plan to gradually expand the target, starting with main product groups such as washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers in major global markets such as Korea, the U.S., and Europe.

This makes it possible to check and control the status of major home appliances and air conditioners from both companies with a single application.

Accordingly, you can control Samsung Electronics' smart home appliances with LG ThinQ by simply registering in advance, without having to go back and forth between LG ThinQ and Samsung SmartThings to control LG Electronics' washing machine and Samsung Electronics' dishwasher.

Products that will start the linked service this year include refrigerators, washing machines, andThere are a total of 9 types, including air conditioning, and they support the functions most frequently used by consumers, such as remote operation, shutdown, and monitoring.

We plan to expand the brands that can be linked in the future and continue upgrading to enable more convenient use of various home appliances and functions, such as cooktops and hoods.

In particular, it is known that next year, they plan to introduce additional home energy management functions beyond device control and add connectable products such as electric vehicle chargers.

This is the first achievement in commercializing the HCA standard 1.0, which was introduced by the Home Connectivity Alliance (HCA), a smart home platform association, at CES 2023 this year.

Founded in January 2022, HCA has major home appliance and air conditioning companies as its members and was formed with the goal of interconnecting the smart home platforms operated by each member company on the cloud.

LG Electronics, the chairman of HCA, is leading the commercialization of HCA standard 1.0 as a global home appliance leader to enhance customer convenience and provide a more innovative smart home life.

In addition to interconnection of home appliances, we plan to provide more functions and services to enhance customer convenience, such as integrated energy management in the future.

LG Electronics Platform Business Center Vice President Jeong Ki-hyun said, “We will expand the barrier-free home appliance ecosystem through LG Electronics’ smart home platform LG ThinQ and provide new smart home experiences to more customers.”

Samsung Electronics Home Appliances Business Division Vice President Park Chan-woo said, “Samsung Electronics SmartThings has been at the forefront of building a smart home ecosystem based on openness that allows connection to devices from more than 300 partners,” adding, “Samsung Electronics is actively interconnecting with products and apps from global home appliance companies through HCA to provide integrated experiences to consumers.” “We will contribute to the market taking a leap forward by providing a smart home experience,” he said.

■ Actively participating in interoperability with home appliance manufacturers such as Matter

Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are also accelerating the expansion of the smart home ecosystem by participating in the global standards association CSA (Connectivity Standards Alliance) as well as HCA.

CSA is an organization that develops and standardizes open communication protocol specifications for smart home devices, and has over 500 member companies.

The two companies are also actively participating in the development and standardization of 'Matter', an Internet Protocol (IP)-based home IoT communication standard technology led by CSA.

Matter can work with existing smart home technologies such as Thread, Wi-Fi, and wired Ethernet protocols by adding a unified application layer to the protocol stack.

This helps smart home devices to communicate with each other reliably.

Future interconnection with third-party devices such as Matter is expected to open the era of full-fledged smart homes.

This is because it enables fast device linkage and use, privacy is guaranteed in terms of security, and all products and platforms can be linked regardless of the home appliance manufacturer, and it is possible to build a smart home environment that is not bound to a platform by home appliance manufacturers.

Samsung Electronics also announced that it will add energy management features and electric vehicle charging products, which are expected to contribute to significant energy savings and carbon emissions reduction.