IKEA has established a ‘Home smart’ business unit which is part of its headquarters in Sweden. The founding marks a strategic decision to invest more in smart home technology, according to the company.
IKEA has been working on its ‘Home smart’ platform for home automation since 2012, but until now the smart home business has been under the ‘Lighting & Home smart’ division. The Swedish company believes that home automation business activities are now big enough for its own division, with which IKEA Sweden now has eleven business units.
According to Peter van der Poel, manager of the umbrella company IKEA Range & Supply, the company has decided to invest heavily in its smart home platform to accelerate development. Among other things, the company expresses its ambition to make a greater diversity of its products ‘smart’.
In recent years, IKEA has expanded its smart home platform from lighting to include power strips, roller blinds and speakers. For this last product category, IKEA works together with Sonos.