Homey Is LG's Secret Weapon For Supercharging Your Smart Home

Forbes

2 days ago

In July last year, Korean giant LG supercharged its smart home efforts by snapping up Dutch brand Athom, maker of the popular line of Homey hubs.
The acquisition saw LG take an 80% stake of Athom, with the remaining 20% due to switch over the next three years.
The deal was immediately compared by industry insiders (myself included) to Samsung's acquisition of SmartThings back in 2014… i.e. massive Korean tech giant gobbles up enthusiast-led IoT start-up.
Like Samsung, and its ever-growing arsenal of multi-connectivity hubs (hidden inside things like TVs, soundbars and even refrigerators), it's easy to see how LG could seemingly take the same path.
However, I sat down with Stefan Witkamp, Athom's CEO, recently, who explained that - for now, at least - it's very much business as usual for Homey, albeit with the dial turned up to 11.
'They really wanted to pursue this as a two brand strategy,' Witkamp explained to me. 'They really focused on, how can we make sure we retain your your team, because we want them to keep working on Homey?
'They have a very clear vision of where they want to take the smart home, and which aspects of Homey they want to take and really integrate. But there's also a lot of room for us to also just do our thing in our separate entity.'
Witkamp told me that Athom's relationship with LG began as it does with pretty much every other tech brand: partnering up to get compatibility across the platforms.
'They were one of the last big appliance manufacturers to even do something with an API. We already had Bosch, Siemans, Miele, Samsung and loads more already on board.'
The Athom boss was, of course, referring to LG throwing open the doors to its smart home platform with the launch of the ThinQ API last December, which made it easier for developers and brands to build smarter, more connected homes with LG appliances.
But Witkamp told me it soon became obvious that Athom's talks with LG weren't just about getting a ThinQ Homey app knocked up.
'They also wanted to become more of a player in the smart home,' he explained. 'It became clear to us that they were interested in more than just a regular device integration partnership.
However, just because LG was interested, it didn't necessarily mean that Homey was for sale.
'We were doing okay,' he told me. 'Actually, we were doing pretty well. We had a very active community and, thanks to our little bit more premium pricing, and our relatively lean operation that's very development focused, we were profitable. So we didn't have to sell and we wanted to make sure that if we did a deal like this, that we would do right by everyone, not just ourselves and our shareholders.
'We went into conversation not only about the commercial terms, but also what's happening with Homey, what is their idea, what is their vision? And is that compatible with the obligation that we felt towards our user-base and community.'
Witkamp told me how, a year or so in, and not a single member of the Homey team has left as a result of the acquisition and that there's no pressure from Korea to change path, or do anything different and, in fact, being part of LG could speed up progress for the Homey ecosystem.
'I think what we're most excited about is just being able to continue our vision as is, with some extra resources and stability. Yes, we were profitable. But it only takes two bad years to fall off into loss leading again,' he said.
'And I think that's something that also is really beneficial for our community. We're really here to stay. It's easier for us to partner with companies. We're opening up new channels, but most importantly, we can continue on the vision that we already have. But in collaboration with one of the world's largest and best electronic manufactures.
The Athom CEO explained how it's very much been a two-way street thus far, with both parties benefitting from the other's expertise.
'If it comes to new hardware, we'll be knocking on LG's door and saying, 'Hey, we want to develop this new hardware. You guys do so much more in hardware than we do. Do you have suppliers? Can we make use of your engineering there?'
'And they come knocking on our doors and saying, 'Hey, we want to provide these sorts of features in ThinQ, can you put them on the roadmap in the near future for Homey, so that we can make use of that and make use of the of the common infrastructure?''
What the LG deal has meant, for Witkamp and his team as he mentioned, is access.
'I think the most interesting for us is partnership opportunities,' he said. 'We didn't really have a lot of issues partnering with the European and US companies because in the Western world Homey was making a name for itself.
'But there's a lot of Asian companies selling into the West as well and, for us, they've always been relatively hard to partner up with. But LG is both an Asian company itself, as well being just a much broader, widely known name. So that opens up doors. That is an interesting opportunity that really helps our platform as well.'
Witkamp also explained to me that Athom had already tapped into LG's expertise on the design front, with the new 'parent' company assisting with the form factor of the Homey Pro Mini (above), which went live at the end of last year.
'It was already in the design phase when we got into the acquisition talks but we did make use of their design expertise to do another round, just to make sure. They didn't change a lot, but for future hardware, it's exciting that we can use their their expertise and their resources to either do a double check or connect us to suppliers. We have some very good electronics designs, but if we want to do something more unique on the physical side, like with enclosures or something like that, it's harder.'
Getting ThinQ synced up and compatible with Homey was always going to be the fastest fruit of the deal - that was announced back in January - but we are already seeing some fruits of the Athom acquisition on LG's side too.
I recently spent some time at LG's Science Park in Seoul, where I got a look at the 'next-gen' version of ThinQ in action, at a demo house kitted out with the latest ThinQ tech.
It was the first time that I'd had to chance to see the 'brains' of ThinQ AI in action, the LG ThinQ ON; which is essentially a Matter-compatible smart speaker designed to take on the likes of Amazon's Echo range, boasting Zigbee, Wi-Fi and Thread connectivity.
'Under the hood, it's actually running Homey Pro OS. That means that, technically, any Homey app available in our app store, could run on that hub,' Witkamp explained.
I was shown how all of this can be combined for a voice-driven smart home experience, with a much more natural interaction than has previously been possible with voice assistants, albeit one still very much tied into an LG brand-heavy smart home.
'LG purposefully chose a more tailored experience,' Witkamp explained. 'Not all the Homey apps will make it to that environment, but technically, that's how it works. But it also means that partners that want to work with LG, will be working with Homey - they simply just build a Homey app, release it in our app store, and then LG can just check a mark, and it will work on their system as well.'
However, rather than the Samsung and SmartThings comparison made in the intro of this story, Witkamp doesn't see a time in the near future where Homey merges into ThinQ and becomes more mainstream focused.
'Under the Homey flag, we're able to move fast,' he explained. ' We don't have to deal with all of the LG red tape that comes with something that's very heavily LG branded.
'The ThinQ app is designed for a different type of customer. We're a more nimble company being able to innovate fast,' he added.
'But now, at the same time, we share that technology so that maybe later on there's a version that works better within the LG environment, so it can come to LG users as well.'
Ultimately, the LG and Athom partnership is shaping up to be more than just a simple takeover, it seems.
The word right now is that it's very much a strategic alliance, where both companies are leveraging their unique strengths to accelerate smart home innovation.
With Homey's agility and LG's massive resources, it looks like a win-win for bringing even smarter, more integrated experiences to homes everywhere… let's just keep our fingers crossed that Homey doesn't fade into the background.