Here’s what looks like an official press release hosted on a press site:
Prices start at 6500kr, which is ~$1000, premier this June in flagship store in Stockholm. All stores in Sweden, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Denmark and Portugal this fall. Rest of the world Spring 2013.
(sorry if this sounds like an ad, I don’t work at IKEA I promise )
Thanks Engio! I thought it was an April fools that we had all missed. Seems legit though.
Richard: I was thinking like you about lifespan. Certainly, some Ikea stuff is 3 years max. Some can tough 10 years. I can imagine someone buying an Ikea hi-fi all-in-one and keeping it for 10 years. As for the styling, this isn’t so trendy that it will date quickly. I think for someone outside of design, it will be good enough.
Also…might be a Europe only product. I don’t know what the TV market is like over there. I can get a 32" LCD for $250. I think a 40" is $400. I think this thing would be good value around $700 in our market.
There are some things that IKEA has offered to the mass market that have been so wildly successful they’ve changed industry;
A - their shelving offerings have obliterated the custom cabinetry discipline (their general cabinetry is a perfect base to build upon - I’ve used their shelves behind facades of styled trim to quickly create custom built-ins) - but I don’t buy their kitchen cabinetry due to the perception of item #1 below,
B - their kid / school / college / dorm categories are the default for anyone who needs to buy furniture, chairs, support decor, etc for their kids. Target has been trying to carve out a bigger slice of that pie and has only been partly successful - that alone points to how powerful is the IKEA stranglehold!
BUT I won’t buy certain things from IKEA - here’s where this all-in-one topics comes in;
anything that would see moisture (for a kitchen, laundry room, bathroom, workshop, basement, garage, etc) because I remember being in college and watching my cheap pressboard ‘furniture’ bloat like a sad balloon.
anything that would need to hold more than 50 lbs (but if I must then I don’t let the wife put it together and I supplement their instructions with wood glue).
NONE of their kitchen appliances - because when stuff breaks, who’m I gonna call, a Swedish parts place?
Their office chairs - I dunno why, maybe because deep in my psyche I believe they don’t really know much about office chair construction and I keep hearing subtle echos of ‘cheap IKEA crap’ in my head while imagining myself falling backward out of one of their chairs onto a freeway (I don’t live beside a freeway but that makes it sound more gruesome).
I’ll agree that integrated electronics have appeal - and value - but just like those TVs with an integrated DVD player, who ya gonna call when the DVD quits working? Anyone serious about electronics will not buy this system. That said, they’ll probably sell a lot of them to college students, just-out-of-college grads and single women. No stereotyping - just looking at the demographics who want a no fuss, no mess, no-tech-needed system like that.
Hey IKEA, my new TVDVDSTANDCOMBOTHINGEE has a dead pixel and the DVD player is skipping…what do I do?
agreed about press board or MDF. But don’t forget you can get a whole wood butcher block 7-8’ countertop for under $100 there. That’s nuts. I have it in my very small kitchen and its held up amazingly well. Its no John Boos, but its not shit laminate either.
I’d argue that point as well with you as I was with R. I could dance on that dresser I bought for my kids room and I’m no ballerina.
Particleboard is standard for pretty much all kitchen cupboards, aside from the very few and expensive solid wood or plywood base ones. Check out top italian companies like Snaiderro that are 10x more than Ikea.Just for the hardware alone the kitchen is worth it. All BLUM hinges/slides (says so on the hinge - Blumotion) and a pair at IKEA is 12. $32 from BLUM.
Appliances as mentioned are all made by Whirlpool so no problem getting parts. Same guts as a Whirlpool/KitchenAid I’m sure. Plus they have 10 year warranty which is more than you get on a name brand. And you get bet IKEA will be around in 10 years, maybe not your local appliance shop.
IKEA actually has amazing customer service. I recently ordered some new doors and cabinets for a kitchen (extension/remodel of an existing IKEA kitchen) and spent like 3 hours on the phone with them. I had figured out all my order and drafted everything up in illustrator with a complete BOM, and they could tell me exactly what I was missing, how things could be combined, even what parts made up a combo shown on a page of the IKEA catalog “model room” (even when the combo was somewhat hacked, they knew it and how it was done).
Since the install, I’ve naturally been back and forth to IKEA several times to return things, buy stuff I forgot, etc. Customer Service/Returns is great (though super long wait if you dare go on the weekened - I don’t - Wed. afternoon is best). You can return pretty much anything, even if you’ve taken it out of the box and messed up the pkg. They are pretty liberal with the return period policy. And they have tons of free parts! I got 4 sets of drawer slides that retail for $40 a set free!
Ya, their office chairs are crap.
OK, product may not be fake, but I’m still not seeing the potential. Especially when we are on the cusp of not needing half the things included (DVD player, cable box, etc.) as things move to the cloud/wireless.
As R said, CE is going away. The quality of Ikea varies, but their high quality stuff, is pretty good. I can see this being pretty successful. In another 5 years, we’ll all be buying displays from wallpaper and paint companies anyways.
Did a little digging, it is definitely real, and they went with a different CE partner this time.
I think this is a really smart move, it may or may not be successful, but it does acknowledge the shift in CE. CE isn’t going away, it is just rapidly changing. Some of the big names who manufacture and retail CE might go away, or be very different. It depends on who understands what is going on out there and who can develop the right mix of products that are relevant.
“(Reuters) - Sweden’s IKEA IKEA.UL, the world’s largest furniture maker, is set to enter the consumer electronics market with products developed in co-operation with China-based TCL Multimedia (1070.HK), IKEA officials said.”
Ikea office chairs: Finally people complaining about these things. I’m a huge Ikea fan, but their chairs are the worst I’ve ever sat in. Wal-Mart has better chairs…how the hell does that work?
Not surprised they are teaming with directly with a Chinese factory. Why go through a middle man like Samsung or LG? Ikea has great QC policies in place too. No doubt about the quality for me.
One last thing…shit isn’t a censored word on here? WTF?
From what I see IKEA is completely missing out on the true
potential of their CE collaborations. Luckily, by this they leave
some open space for more high end integrations, collaborations.
Building TV furniture for 2015 really resembles building a
better horse whip. IKEA has the market penetration to sell
everything, but that one will go away, quickly.
Partnering with these folks is a step down from partnering with the likes of Samsung / Matsushita / Sony (Korean, Japanese and Japanese - for a reason). Can’t wait to see how many Swede exec’s from Älmhult are stuck in China for weeks at a time complaining about the beige milk, oversized lazy-susans and shoddy quality of the pre-production runs.
At first I didn’t like this, because I was thinking of it in my own world and it just would never work. But when you think about Ikea, it’s all about options. This is just another option and something I can see be very appealing to a lot of people. A lot of people just want a one stop solution. I don’t count on IKEA furniture to last that long, but at the same time I don’t expect to own the same tv for years and years either anymore. It’s not like back in the day when you have a tv until it dies. My biggest complaints are DVD and not blue ray. Doesn’t seem flexible, I like moving my tv around depending on where I am. I don’t like the DVD player showing on the front.
It’s an option though, you can go but everything individuality still if you want, and now you have to option not too.
Great write up about the interface on the front page. Really made me change my mind about this. Seems like Ikea really tried to push the TV forward in terms of UX as well as the integration with furniture.
It also made me think…did Apple get beat to the wire on a product? If they do an fully integrated Apple TV now, I wonder if people will ask why they are late to this game.
I’m still waffling…but IF IKEA contributes high quality design input, insists upon superb attention to the details and puts a surgeon-like control on production quality, then it might be cool.
But I still have my doubts their production partner can properly pull it off.
The actual product and quality aside (I personally like the modularity of it), one big hurdle Ikea has to go through is limited retail stores. Any other TV models you can buy a BlueBox, BoxMart, or any other Big Box companies next to other TVs. Ikea only has Ikea to sell their stuff where most people won’t know you can now buy a TV from.
I hope it sells well, would be interesting if they branch out into more electronics if so.
Apple TV been on the market for well over a year now; it’s an internet/network dongle for your TV, not an actual TV. Or is there a new Apple TV I don’t know about?
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