Company to launch home appliances with Tizen OS

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February 3, 2015 4:40 PM

Tizen Samsung's home-grown system is a key part of the firm's campaign to carve out a niche in mobile software and services, to complement its hardware role.

Samsung Electronics is to launch a range of smart appliances including refrigerators, air conditioners and washing machines as it plans expand its business in Internet-connected homes.

The announcement was made on Tuesday, February 3, 2015, by a top executive of the South Korean company. The tech giant wants to invest more resources into what it calls Internet of Things (IoT), as the smartphones market, one of its core product categories becomes filled up

All of the new appliances will run on Samsung's Tizen operating system, which the company has dubbed as a platform not restricted to phones only, but also for a range of connected home appliances that can communicate with one another.

Speaking to reporters, B.K. Yoon, head of Samsung's consumer electronics unit said, "We are preparing launches of Tizen-powered TVs, refrigerators, air conditioners and other premium-priced home appliances this year."

He added that the company, which is one of the top mobile phone makers, plans to eventually make all its new products Internet-connected by 2020.

"I think we have to make preparations for the IoT for future growth, as we previously grew in size by switching from... feature phones to smartphones," Yoon said.

He also unveiled the company's first-ever Tizen smart TVs at the (CES) in Las Vegas last month.

By developing Tizen, Samsung has also tried to lower its reliance on Google's Android platform that powers the vast majority of Samsung's mobile devices.

However, the use of Tizen so far has been limited to a handful of Samsung gadgets including a low-end smartphone and wearables.

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