In the last issue of Consumer News, Evelyn Smith wrote about the lack of choice of fridges in Canada and the USA compared with the range available to us here. Not yet generally available here, but soon to be in a store near you are the Internet-enabled fridge and the robotic vacuum cleaner, both developed by Electrolux in Sweden. This should interest the North Americans.
There is a popular argument at the moment that 'old economy' industries are on the way out, such as car manufacturing, and 'new economy' industries, in some way linked with the Internet, are the way demand will grow in the future. Refrigerators and other white-goods manufacturing could be regarded as 'old economy', but what Electrolux has done is develop refrigerators that will be essential to 'new economy' people, and is no doubt working on washing machines and other domestic devices. After all the Internet will not cool your beer, nor wash your clothes, but could help you in doing so.
Last year Electrolux introduced the 'screenfridge'. It chills food and drink just like any 'fridge, but it is quite smart! In the door is a computer with a touch-sensitive screen which allows the user to have full Internet access, text and video e-mail (yes it does have a web camera) and, most useful, can show images from security cameras round the house. Imagine looking in the fridge to see who is at the door!
There are programmes which allow the fridge to select recipes, not just based on what is in the 'fridge, but using up first the items with the approaching use-by dates. A video chef will explain how to cook the suggested dishes. If you are short of ingredients the 'fridge will immediately e-mail an order to your designated on-line retailer. It cannot be too long before a programme is inserted which will enable the fridge to do all your shopping for you. There will be sensors telling it when loo rolls are running out and whether you have enough wine for that big dinner party on Friday.
It does not end there. The Electrolux vision is of a fully integrated home where functions are controlled by the smart kitchen. They have joined with fellow Swedish mobile phone group Ericsson to develop the infrastructure of the home of the future where it will be possible to control many functions by means ~ of a mobile phone or an Internet message. Imagine being able to sit on the train and instruct the robot vacuum cleaner to start cleaning up the mess or tell the heating to come on as you will be home earlier than expected.
All this is a long way in the future, you may say. Electrolux, on the contrary, thinks that the market for 'smart' appliances will explode between 2003 and 2005, with some products on the market by the end of this year.
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