LG Electronics dropped off our radar a little after it dropped smartphones from its roster. Fewer product releases annually and all that. This could change thanks to a new purchase by the South Korean tech company.
Athom is — or rather was — a Netherlands-based smart home company. It hasn’t moved or anything but it is under new management. LG has acquired some 80% of the company outright, planning to secure the remaining 20% over the next three years.
LG’s new Homey
Why, you ask? It’s all to secure a few new Homeys for the South Korean company. Homey is LG’s new smart home platform, which will “create an AI home that delivers optimal space solutions by gaining a deeper understanding of the customer”. Generative AI is involved, because of course it is, only LG calls its version of AI “Affectionate Intelligence technology”.
Homey is actually Athom’s smart home hub, a little like Samsung’s SmartThings setup, but in coming into LG’s fold, the platform will integrate LG’s range of devices and give it a boost in the smart home space. That’s far more efficient than doing any pesky internal research and development from scratch, but it could have pleasant knock-on effects for LG customers.
See, the company wants to create an AI home, where “customers will engage with generative AI, which will manage appliances and IoT devices to create a personalized environment tailored to their preferences”. It sounds great on paper but execution is another matter. That’s where Homey and Athom come in since they’ve already done much of the work. Just plug in some generative AI and everything should be rosy. Right?
That’s… more or less the plan. The company’s Jung Ki-hyun said, “By leveraging the synergy between the two companies, we will expand our open ecosystem and external integration services, aiming to provide customers with more diverse and multidimensional space experiences.” Translated, customers will soon have a new Homey in the house who will listen to (and keep an eye on) them as they go about their daily lives.
The point is to make products and (inevitably) services automatically customisable. It could be we’ll see something truly interesting from the South Korean company. If they let the folks who worked on the LG Wing loose on developing this platform, that’d be fine by us.
