CES 2018: Everything will be connected, whether you like it or not

Alex Choros - Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor

Last updated 12 January 2018

Every January, the world's largest tech manufacturers converge upon Las Vegas for the CES trade-show to unveil new products and lay out their vision for the year. It's quite telling that two of the year's most important keynotes - presentations from Samsung and LG - were less about products, and more about ideas.

That's not to say that Samsung and LG didn't have new TVs, washing machines, and fridges to show off, but it's not the individual devices that matter — it's how they'll work together.

Both South Korean technology giants are doubling down on smart home appliances, with LG promising artificial intelligence and connectivity for all of its home appliances by the end of year, from fridges to ovens to air-conditioners.

LG says its "smart fridge" will be able to give you recipe recommendations based on the food you have inside. Once you've selected a recipe, it will forward this information onto your oven, which will begin preheating to the required temperature. Your oven, in turn, will inform your dishwasher of the optimal wash cycle; for example, if you've cooked a particularly greasy meal, it might run a hotter, longer cycle.

Other new LG smart appliances will work alone; washing machines can calculate an ideal cycle based on the clothes you toss in, the weather, and air quality. Air-conditioners will learn your living patterns over time and automatically cool the room to your preferred temperature.

Samsung's connected utopia is a little further off, with the manufacturer promising that all of its products will be Internet of Things (IoT) ready by 2020. IoT is a catch-all phrase used to refer to technology that will turn "dumb" objects into "smart" ones, that is, take them online. In a futurist's dream of a connected world, everything is connected to the network, from fridges and light globes, down to cartons of milk and the toothpaste tube in your bathroom. Everything is feeding back tiny bits of data and helping smart appliances automate tasks to make our lives easier.

Samsung's philosophy behind IoT is that it "should be easy as flipping a switch", and is looking at ways to make these connected products work seamlessly with one another.

In the short term, Samsung is planning to launch Bixby-enabled TVs and refrigerators by the end of the year. Bixby is Samsung's take on a voice assistant like Siri and Google Assistant, and the company envisions it at the centre of its smart home. For example, if you're willing to commit to Samsung's range of connected devices, you'll eventually be able to check on your washing machine by asking your fridge.

While Samsung products will almost certainly work best with other Samsung products, the company pointed to fragmentation in the space as being one of the major barriers preventing end users from getting involved. To address this, Samsung is working with partners such as the Open Connectivity Foundation in attempt to set common industry standards that should ensure products from different manufacturers can talk to one another.

Samsung and LG might have the sheer size and resources needed to build at least some of their own smart home ecosystem, but many other manufacturers are instead piggybacking off Amazon and Google's efforts.

2018 will bring a deluge of new devices kitted out with voice assistants; specifically, Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant. CES showed manufacturers rushing to add the digital companions to everything from TVs to speakers to headphones to routers to cars.

Hisense is putting Alexa in TVs, LG is adding Google Assistant to its TVs and Alexa to fridges, Toyota and Panasonic are adding Alexa to in-car entertainment systems, Lenovo and Sony have Google Assistant smart displays, Sony is updating old headphones with Google Assistant, and that's just the start. Get ready to be able to talk to every gadget you own.

Of course, internet connectivity can be a double-edged sword. While smarter devices can make our lives easier, they can also pose a risk. Symantec's Nick Savvides says that cyber-criminals will increasingly target expensive connected devices with threats like ransomware. He believes that victims will be more willing to pay "to make the problem go away" when it comes to expensive home appliances. A $300 ransom might not seem like an unreasonable price to get your $5,000 smart fridge working again.

While Samsung, for example, is expanding its Knox security platform to smart home devices, the success of the smart home may very well depend on how long manufacturers keep supporting their newfangled connected appliances.

It's very rare to see phone manufacturers offer more than three years of post-purchase support, but appliances tend to have much longer lifespans. Are smart fridge manufacturers willing to keep releasing security patches for 10 year old models? Because if they're not, they probably shouldn't be selling a smart fridge.

Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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