IKEA Launches a New Apple Watch App
Furniture seller IKEA, which continues to invest in Smart Home products and connected features, recently announced an update to its iOS app which will include a new Apple Watch app. While still in final development, the app will reportedly allow users to remotely control smart home products that are connected to the company’s Dirigera hub. Screenshots of the app’s listing in the App Store show cards linked to devices in specific rooms, scene setting, and color/brightness settings for Smart Lights.
The Circana Take:
- As IKEA builds more smart solutions (and as the need to integrate with other platforms and ecosystems grows) wearables will emerge as another way to interface with Smart Home devices; either through monitoring, device control, or authentication (as in the case of Smart Locks).
- Adding Apple Watch as a touchpoint will give IKEA owners more control over their devices and could emerge as a selling point for consumers trying to choose which platform to invest in (if smartwatch access is seen as a benefit).
Samsung Brings Ambient Sensing to Appliances
Samsung’s SmartThings division unveiled new AI technology during the company’s Galaxy Unpacked 2025 event. The new tools, all around ‘ambient sensing’ will fall under Samsung’s Home AI line and will gather insights from the connected devices in your home, with the goal of adapting them to your everyday life. One example cited was Human Detection & Activity Monitoring in which SmartThings can track user fitness activities or sleep (via sensors embedded in other Samsung products) and then recommend new routines to optimize the user’s health.
The Circana Take:
- Connecting disparate devices together is an ambitious undertaking. However, Samsung has a high installed base of owners as one of the largest consumer electronics manufacturers in the world.
- Presumably most of the devices Samsung makes are connected and laden with sensors, however individual households differ in the number and types of devices owned, and people tend to own a selection of brands of appliances and other small devices.
- While it makes sense that millions of SmartThings devices could activate their sensors for a wider coordinated effort at quantifying the health of the device users, balancing the enormity of the undertaking with user privacy and security will be a challenge.