[Summary] With the new year, Samsung Electronics and SK Telecom are once again pushing the 'smart home' as if it were new. But does history repeat itself? As if by agreement, they have brought out the same hub box and platform from ten years ago. I keep asking the same question: what, really, is the true identity of that smart home? Think about what a customer is supposed to put in the shopping cart. It will probably be products that do not even exist yet, which they list as services the smart home will eventually have. The starting point needs to be the challenge of delivering those concrete products.

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Last weekThe other day, SK Telecom released a press release announcing 'a never-before phone and TV.' Ah, a catchy headline that feels like a new year vision declaration. But when I got into the body and read through some of the PR copy, I could not help but sigh. It goes like this: "With one all-new home hub device, 'B Box,' the future 'smart home' becomes reality."

Let me dig a bit further. Here is the description of 'B Box.'

B Box is an Android OS-based 'home hub device' that integrates IPTV and VOD (video on demand), as well as high-definition video calling, home monitoring, family SNS, and cloud services, and delivers home media functions optimally fused with wired and wireless telecom services.

OK, got it, for now. But according to SK Broadband's site description, this box surprisingly does not include a camera. So how on earth are HD video calling and home monitoring supposed to be possible? I had to dig hard to find the answer on SK Telecom's blog. The camera has to be bought separately for 30,000 won. In the end, B Box is really just an Android set-top box with a monthly rental fee of 3,000 won and a few preinstalled apps (not compatible with Google's Android TV).

A few weeks ago, a similar déjà vu came over me when I saw Samsung Electronics' CES press release. Samsung is launching a 'Samsung Smart Home' service that links home appliances with IT devices (smart TV, smartphone, wearable) into an integrated platform. In other words, the main service is controlling home appliances using the smart TV, smartphone, and Galaxy Gear. But I am curious what that centerpiece integrated smart home platform actually is.

Boiling it down: is SK Telecom's 'smart home' really just 'smart IPTV'? Is Samsung Electronics' 'smart home' really an 'Internet of Things platform'?

Both SK Telecom and Samsung will probably object to such a simple conclusion. Both wrap up the smart home story with 'extensibility.' The B Box materials list items like video conferencing, cloud gaming, cloud PC, IoT, healthcare, and energy management. Samsung is not all that different: they say Samsung Smart Home will expand into various areas such as smart access control, energy, health, and eco-friendly services.

B Box Smart Home Service Expansion (source: SK Telecom official blog)

The keywords in both companies' press releases tell you how they are thinking about 'smart home.' 'Smart life' or 'smart living' is the ultimate picture both companies have in mind. Suddenly the clock rewinds ten years. Right at the start of the 21st century, these two companies were making nearly the same pitch. Back then it actually sounded somewhat futuristic. But it failed to catch consumer attention, and the business more or less disappeared for a while. Now, a decade later, they come back with the same script. Has the situation changed?

Unfortunately, not really. The issue is this: 'smart home' has no substance. 'Smart life'? It sounds very profound, but what service is that, exactly? What product is the consumer supposed to drop into the cart? For example, unlike SK Telecom, KT has continuously kept a smart home business going, and they frame the smart home through devices like the smart home pad and KIBOT (an educational robot). LG U+ is selling something similar called Home Boy. SK is trying to solve it with a set-top box. Samsung, of course, wants to bundle smart appliances.

OK, strip off all the froth and look at it. In the consumer's cart there is a tablet, an IPTV set-top box, or an appliance. Of these, what exactly is the smart home? It sounds like there should be something grand, but what they always(!) put forward is just 'home monitoring' or 'appliance control.' (It is almost inevitable that searching 'smart home' on Wikipedia redirects to the 'home automation' page.)

Let me rewind the clock to about 60 years ago. Illustrations in 50s and 60s American magazines of future homes with household errand robots and automatic cooking machines are a classic picture of the future. An optimistic, vague hope that the economy would keep growing and that science and technology would enrich our lives. Readers surely fell into such dreams easily. But even setting aside the fact that the 1970s 'Limits to Growth' report first sounded the warning of a not-so-bright future, technology has always had to compromise with economics as it gets commercialized. In the end, nobody has an errand robot or an automatic cooking machine in their home, and drawing such scenes as 'the future' now would even be called childish.

Back to ten years ago. People being excessively optimistic and vague about the future seems to be a natural trait. This time it is the smart home. No, actually worse. At least we settled for robot vacuums and microwaves instead of errand robots and automated chefs. The smart home's identity is unknown. Even so, when companies show a (demo) vision of a smart home that bundles every kind of media, offers security, lets you turn on the boiler remotely, and handles health and energy management, most consumers gave a thumbs-up. But the vast majority never pulled that cool smart home 'platform' into their homes. It failed thoroughly. That was the result ten years ago. Unless you build the platform in like a fixture of the house, a smart home as a platform could not succeed. That is why individual smart-home products faded away, and only at the scale of construction and urban planning, as a U-City, was the idea barely kept alive.

Of course, the reason they bring this failed concept back is understandable. SK Telecom wanted to talk about what comes after IPTV; Samsung wanted to talk about what comes after smart TV. But homework remains. Is IPTV a successful new medium? Is smart TV a successful platform? Before we talk about IPTV or smart TV evolving into a unified smart home platform, let's ask once more whether IPTV really is the center of personal media, and whether the smart TV truly is the center of the home platform. The question is how to settle this transitional stage, not how to expand it.

On top of that, the smart home's direction runs against consumption trends. New media no longer centers on the home but on the moving individual. Think about why SK went to the trouble of building mobile IPTV, and why even so that product has so little impact. In that context, will the next step after B TV really be a new set-top box? Customers sometimes appear to want everything, but they only pay for what they truly need. Samsung poured its resources into the most advanced smart TVs, yet why do customers barely use those smart features? And still, is the next feature to add to smart TV really appliance control?

Yes, whatever pessimistic things I say, media consumption will continue to diversify, and the Internet of Things will gradually spread. In an aging society, healthcare will become more important by the day, and energy management will soon become urgent. But bundling all of that into a virtual product or platform called 'smart home' is not the future of IPTV or smart TV. New media products, IoT appliances, healthcare services, energy management services—each of those individual products and services is the real thing consumers see. And each of them is the challenge operators must overcome. Is any one of them an easy task?

What we need urgently is not an integrated platform but concrete forms for individual products and services. For example, LG Electronics' 'Home Chat,' which lets you chat with your appliances, is at least a cute idea. Until appliances have real AI, the chat format may not mean much, but the intent to sketch the future of IoT through such a metaphor is commendable. It is also intriguing to hear that Google acquired smart thermostat company Nest for a hefty sum. No need to make a fuss about Google trying to dominate the smart home market. If that were the direction, they would already have completed it with Google Fiber or Google TV. Nest makes products that actually sell. Google paid up for that capability. It is not a set-top box rental model, nor a case of buying the latest appliance without even knowing what 'smart' means. There are consumers who need a smart thermostat, and because it was made with very refined craft, they gladly open their wallets.

A platform business model is thoroughly operator-oriented, never consumer-oriented. Presenting a home monitoring service that does not even include a camera as the platform's flagship product is not a slip-up. No matter how consumers feel about it, from the platform's point of view there is nothing missing. They might imagine that third parties will take care of the cameras. Maybe a novel 'smart' camera will attach itself. But which operator would pay attention to a platform consumers already do not care about? Think of it this way: consumers buy Nest's products. Neither a Samsung platform nor an SK platform is needed for that. So who will voluntarily build a product for this platform? Or are Samsung or SK themselves planning to build a Nest-like product? If not, how exactly is energy management going to be done? Will it end again with a B2B model, a construction model, another U-City model?

If so, the past really will become a completely lost decade.