Energy efficiency and then more recently appliance connectivity have been the two dominant trends that have developed during the decade of the home appliance sector’s participation at IFA stressed CECED President Dr Reinhard Zinkann (Miele) during his address to IFA on 30th August 2017.
IFA is Berlin’s annual consumer electronics fair providing industry and the consumer with the opportunity to discover inter alia the latest innovations and trends on offer from the home appliance industry. The number of home appliance sector exhibitors has grown from 70 in 2018 to 180 last year.
Dr Zinkann pointedly stressed the need to increase the use of dishwashers by Europeans in order to secure important energy and water savings. “There is a huge potential for savings”, he stressed citing the wide variations in dishwasher use across the continent and an overall average of just 45%.
An increase to 65% would provide an annual saving of 28 terrawatt hours, ten times the saving that the European Commission expects from the next label and eco-design regulation for dishwashers, he continued.
On connected appliances, Dr Zinkann underlined how great efforts had been made to foster open systems, capable of integrating web-based services and appliances from different brands. Interoperability is key. Appliances from different companies need to be able to communicate with each other. Energy management and optimising the user of energy would be an obvious consumer benefit with the use of energy tariffs or the tapping into self-generated, renewable energy.
Connected major appliances had roughly doubled their market value over the first six months of the year and posted a 5% share of the total market.