Samsung Wants to Be the World's Biggest Appliance Maker by 2015
The technology industry hums with disruptive new companies that enter the market by taking share away from others or creating markets of their own. But kitchen appliances? The brands that dominate the field today—Whirlpool, General Electric, Kenmore—are the same names we’ve known for decades. Samsung Electronics plans to upend that.
The Korean electronics company says it wants to become the world’s largest appliance manufacturer by 2015. It’s already the fastest-growing appliance brand in the U.S., having jumped from 2.3 percent in market share to more than 10.5 percent over the last five years. “We’re on track,” says B.K. Yoon, Samsung’s co-chief executive officer in charge of consumer products such as TVs and appliances. But grabbing the top spot from appliance leader Whirlpool won’t be so easy. Samsung’s appliance-related revenue totals roughly $12 billion a year; Whirlpool took in almost $18 billion in 2012. (Whirlpool declined to comment.) In the U.S. especially, “Samsung has a way to go,” says Eric Voyer, a vice president and former appliance-industry analyst at the Stevenson Co., a market research firm.
At the weeklong International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Samsung announced a Smart Home initiative, which aims to allow owners to use smartphones and tablets to control their air conditioners, refrigerators, washers, and LED lighting. The appliances will also connect to the Internet independently to download new software or let users monitor their homes via built-in exterior cameras. At the Jan. 7 press conference, the company spent as much time talking up its new refrigerators and washing machines as it did its tablets and ultra-HD TVs.
Yoon says his company’s effort to outsell Whirlpool will depend on Samsung’s ability to develop appliances that go further than customers are used to. “The speed of innovation in home appliances is very slow. It’s not like it’s been with phones, PCs, and TVs,” Yoon says. “The first dishwashers were made in 1860, and they haven’t really changed in 150 years.”
Beyond its Smart Home designs, Samsung has pushed appliance-specific features into each product to differentiate them from the competition. Its Chef Collection refrigerator can dispense still and sparkling water, keep different zones cooled to different temperatures, and convert a small fridge compartment into a secondary freezer. The company’s FlexDuo oven comes with an insert that can partition it into two cooking areas heated to different temperatures. At CES, Samsung executives introduced a dishwashing technology called WaterWall, which replaces the familiar rotary spray arm with a linear system that promises to get water into hard-to-reach corners of the dishwasher.