Appliance manufacturers have spent years developing smart fridges that can tell when food needs to be ordered, but many consumers still cannot see the point of an intelligent kitchen. Karsten Ottenberg is the chief executive of Europe's biggest home appliance maker, BSH of Germany. In an interview with dpa during the recent IFA consumer electronics trade fair in Berlin, he offered an indication of what the networked kitchen of the future may look like.
Q: What can the new appliances you presented at the IFA fair at the Bosch and Siemens stand do for the customer?
A: We are aiming to provide more value to our customers. The new digital designs have to be heavily oriented to their analogue lives.
Even a digital display can't help you after you have burned the roast chicken, but networked appliances do aim - apart from providing extra functions and easy handling - to move you through the steps towards the outcome you desire, whether it's clean clothes or a nice meal.
It may be that an individual appliance could do that for you, but often it takes a series of appliances in the kitchen to get everything perfect.
In a networked kitchen the dishwasher will know what programme to choose, because it will have been told by the oven, which prepared a certain meal, that an unusually large amount of protein is stuck to the dinner plates.
Q: Don't modern kitchens already offer almost every option a person would need?
A: The typical owner of a dishwasher only uses on average about 20 per cent of the options the appliance offers. If we can design user-oriented menu dialogues, our customers will find the dishwasher is achieving a better cleaning result, and that's added value.
It's not just about being able to monitor an appliance remotely, or to turn it on or off from work. It's also important that the software design maintains your privacy. It needs be fully transparent to our customers what information the appliance is gathering about them.
Q: Is it only possible to create a network between all the appliances made by the BSH group or can they be linked to other brands?
A: An appliance made by another manufacturer has to conform to certain basic rules if it is to use our Home Connect System. They don't have to use our hardware, but they must be programmed for it.
Manufacturers can link an appliance into the network and to our app as well. We are holding talks on that at the moment with other appliance makers.
Q: US internet giants Google and Apple are also developing solutions for the smart home along with traditional home appliance makers. Which system has the best chance of establishing itself on the market?
A: There are going to be different smart home systems in the future. Along with Apple's HomeKit and Google's Nest products, we think simpler systems such as Lowe's Iris system will also have a place in the home.
Our company is not going to be concerning itself with lamps and garage doors. We will leave that to others. We are the "kitchen guys" who specialise in things for the kitchen and laundry.
Q: Won't customers want to have integrated control systems and have a central app for the smart home?
A: Yes, and that is why we are ready to offer interfaces at our back end to partners. But users must be able to see what is happening with their data.
If I have a networked alarm clock that can tell my coffee machine to switch on, then there is a transfer of information between two cloud networks. One of those clouds may be in the United States. That fact must be clear to the customer.
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