Blue Technology Observation] Home appliances are facing the encirclement and suppression of Chinese brands, and Samsung LG has felt tremendous pressure. In the face of the gradually narrowing space for home appliances, the boundaries of Samsung LG's expansion are spreading to smart cars.
CES 2024 is a bellwether to understand the trend of the industry and the development trend of enterprises. As the "Spring Festival Gala" of the global science and technology industry, leading technology manufacturers want to seek industry breakthroughs through the latest technologies and products. Among them, Samsung, which has a global leading edge in many fields such as mobile phones, home appliances, and chip manufacturing, is naturally the focus.
At CES 2024, Samsung Electronics announced a partnership with Tesla, the world's new energy king, through its SmartThings Energy, an integrated energy management and control platform. Considering that this is the first time that Tesla has connected an external smart home platform to its own API, and that both Samsung and Tesla have strong influence in their respective fields, it is worth looking forward to what kind of sparks will collide between the two collaborations.
More importantly, this move is also in line with Samsung's development strategy of leaning towards the smart car industry in recent years, showing that Samsung's ambitions in the new energy vehicle industry are accelerating.
Samsung accelerates the deployment of smart cars
In recent years, the global consumer electronics and TV industries are facing saturated growth, and Samsung, which occupies a dominant position in the global smartphone and TV markets, has also suffered from the dilemma of declining market share.
However, with the gradual implementation of Samsung's strategic layout for future new energy vehicles and smart cars, perhaps Samsung is actually playing a game of "big chess" in this round of decline in the consumer electronics industry.
Samsung's real purpose is to actively seek the transfer of corporate development strategy and take the initiative in emerging industry markets. Because, Samsung's development trend in the new energy vehicle industry is clearly visible.
Currently, Samsung Electronics is strengthening its competitiveness by expanding its cooperation with global automakers. In addition to providing automotive semiconductors and display components for major manufacturers, Samsung is also expanding the boundaries of software services, and wants to single-handedly take care of the "smart" ecology in the era of smart cars.
For example, the partnership with Tesla through SmartThings Energy is reported to be able to connect to Tesla's solar panels, PowerWall and electric vehicles to monitor and control electricity through an app.
At CES 2024, Samsung Electronics will also showcase the integration of SmartThings Energy and Tesla PowerWall. The service will be launched in the United States in the second quarter of this year and will be gradually expanded.
Since then, Samsung's partnership with Tesla has expanded from hardware to software. In 2023, Tesla will bring the next generation of self-driving chips HW 50 outsourced production to Samsung Electronics' OEM division. In addition to software and chips, Samsung Electro-Mechanics is also providing Tesla** vehicle camera modules, and the partnership between Tesla and Samsung is getting stronger and stronger.
Samsung is by no means alone
Samsung's ambitions for new energy vehicles and smart cars represent the unanimous pursuit of global technology companies. In addition to Samsung, there are more cross-border giants who have poured into the new energy vehicle track, wanting to take a share of this blue ocean market.
For example, LG, another representative of South Korea's home appliance industry, which is also gradually encroached on by Chinese companies in the competition in the home appliance market, Yonhap News Agency reported in April last year that a South Korean consortium led by LG New Energy signed an agreement with two Indonesian state-owned enterprises to build a battery industry chain project worth about 9 billion US dollars (about 57.3 billion yuan) in the local area.
LG Energy Solution is the world's second-largest EV battery manufacturer, with major customers including Tesla, General Motors and Volkswagen, and currently has battery production facilities in the United States, China and South Korea.
In addition, there are representatives of the Japanese home appliance industry, such as Sony, Panasonic, and Sharp, similar to the choices of Korean companies Samsung and LG, and the development focus of the Japanese home appliance industry is gradually shifting away from its own industry and actively transforming to high value-added industries such as new energy vehicles.
In October 2022, the Vision-S 02, a concept car built by the electric vehicle company jointly owned by Sony and Honda, was officially released, and the official image was also followed. The model has a 2+3+2 seven-seat layout and is expected to be officially launched in the U.S. market in the first quarter of 2026, with deliveries starting at the same time.
In July last year, according to KWCH, the governor of Kansas confirmed that Panasonic will build a new battery plant in the state, and the plan is expected to invest $4 billion to build the largest battery plant in the United States. As one of the earliest new energy battery manufacturers that Tesla cooperated, Panasonic has reached a long-term and stable cooperation with Tesla since 2009.
At last year's CES 2023 exhibition, Sharp showcased the company's advanced technologies and products with a focus on environmental, social and ESG under the four themes of TV, new energy, automotive and AR VR. During this period, Sharp unveiled a passenger seat information display with a view-view control display, a "driver monitoring system" and a silicon-based solar module for automobiles.
It can be seen that a number of Japanese and South Korean manufacturers that have been calling for wind and rain in the home appliance or consumer electronics industry are aiming at the transformation of the new energy vehicle track, and want to become the underlying ecosystem that the new energy vehicle market cannot do without in the future.
Samsung has the advantage of ecological chain
From the current point of view, home appliance companies have entered the field of smart cars, and Samsung is a small step faster than its peers.
Of course, Samsung, which has "mastered core technologies" in mobile phones, home appliances, chip manufacturing and other fields, is more likely to have a significant impact on the consumer electronics and new energy vehicle markets, because of the advantages of the ecological chain it has built over the years.
As the world's top chip manufacturer, Samsung Electronics is destined to cooperate with car manufacturers more frequently.
According to Omdia, the global automotive semiconductor market is expected to grow at an annual average of 128% to $96.2 billion. After the acquisition of Harman in 2016 and its return to the automotive field, the market has been rumored that Samsung will continue to make large-scale mergers and acquisitions in the field of automotive electronics.
In terms of software, in addition to sticking its "hand" into Tesla this time, in April last year, Samsung Electronics signed a memorandum of cooperation with Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Motors Company, announcing that it would strengthen software cooperation between the two, and the top one is also the SmartThings platform. The goal of the tripartite collaboration is to develop "home-to-car" and "car-to-home" services that connect smart homes with in-vehicle infotainment systems for two-way remote control.
Through the SmartThings platform, users will be able to perform various car-related actions at home. From the car, home appliances such as TVs, air conditioners, and electric car chargers can also be controlled. The platform will also develop integrated home energy management services that allow users to monitor the amount of energy consumed by connected devices in their homes, a technology that began to emerge from Samsung's partnership with Tesla last year.
At the IAA Mobility 2023 exhibition in Munich, Germany, last September, Samsung Electronics Device Solutions and Samsung Display introduced next-generation automotive semiconductor products and technologies.
After years of layout, Samsung has built a collaborative network for new energy vehicles, covering key technologies from the bottom to the application layer, coupled with Samsung's global influence, popularity and ecological chain, Samsung's future in the global smart car market should not be underestimated.