Having already mastered meatballs and easy-to-assemble furniture, Ikea is setting its sights on a new chapter.
Driving the news: In a push to bring smart home products into the mainstream, Ikea is planning to launch a new line of low-cost devices that are compatible with other brands’ smart home hubs, like Amazon’s Alexa or Google Nest.
- According to The Verge, the company is planning to roll out more than 20 smart products next year, including smart lights, sensors, and air-quality devices like temperature and humidity monitors.
- All of the new devices will be Matter products — a standard developed by companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung to allow different smart devices to work alongside each other.
Why it matters: Being able to turn off the lights with your voice is cool for some people, but just 11% of households around the world have a smart home device. By making them cheap and simple to use, Ikea could bridge the gap between tech enthusiasts and the average consumer.
- The high price has been cited as a main reason for not owning a smart home device, though privacy and the fear of technical issues have also held people back.
Bottom line: With nearly 900 million customers globally, Ikea has the mass market appeal to bring niche products into the mainstream. If it can’t pull it off, smart home devices may never become the household fixture that proponents have long expected.—LA