Did you know that four out of ten refrigerators in the European market are built-in types?

It is a simple yet noteworthy statistic of the European market. Unlike other regions, the percentage of built-in appliances in Europe is over 40 percent. Especially in Germany, around 50 percent of households use built-in appliances. This shows how much European customers love to use built-in type products that will perfectly fit into their home.

This is why Samsung Electronics and other home appliance manufacturers have such a fierce built-in appliances competition in Europe. Because built-in products exceed other types by far in terms of growth rate and profitability, the European market is all about built-in appliances. Global appliances manufacturers cannot miss this market as built-in appliances are an integral part and excellent test bed for the Internet of Things (IoT) in future households.

Opening a Premium Built-in Showroom in Poland

Samsung recently opened a built-in showroom “Cook Story by Samsung” in Warsaw, Poland. This showroom was the first of its kind in the European market and is full of premium built-in products that are optimized for European lifestyles. Samsung was the number one manufacturer of refrigerators, washing machines and electric ranges in Poland since 2012. As the new built-in products gained huge popularities after their release in the market earlier this year, Samsung also took the first place in the built-in refrigerator market in July.

Poland is just a starting point for Samsung to showcase its built-in products, as it plans to add more built-in showrooms in many other European countries. These showrooms will offer hands-on experiences of the leading built-in products to the customers, along with cooking shows and other various events. Samsung will bring unprecedented kitchen experiences for its customers.

Building a Full Lineup of Smart Built-ins

Samsung introduced a variety of the new built-in products to European countries to build its unique lineup in this year.

The lineup includes refrigerator models with No Frost technology and Twin Cooling Plus that maintains an optimal humidity level up to 70 percent, ovens with Gourmet Vapour Technology that efficiently delivers a super-heated vapor that quickly spreads from corner to corner to ensure even cooking, and Dual cook that is divided into two small ovens for separate cooking processes. It also contains induction cook tops with Virtual Flame Technology as well as Water Wall dishwashers that clean all of your dishes from corner to corner using high pressure wall of water that glides back and forth.

Another special feature of Samsung built-in appliances is that all major functions can be simply controlled via smartphones. For example, your smartphone can tell you whether the doors of refrigerators are opened. You can also check the temperatures of fridge and freezer so you can adjust the numbers from outside or start Rapid Cooling function. The products also support a smart warranty service that automatically diagnoses and treats any problems without consulting the manuals. In addition, Samsung plans to adopt soon the IoT services that will realize a more convenient connected home by enabling connection between appliances and other devices with Samsung Connect.

Close Collaborations with European Furniture Companies

Built-in appliances are basically the fusion of furniture and appliances, and therefore cooperation with furniture companies is inevitable. Samsung will collaborate to showcase and sell built-in appliances with major European furniture companies such as Nolte of Germany, Nobia of Northern Europe (including Marbodal), Veneta Cucine of Italy and more.

At the beginning of this month, Samsung revealed a European style built-in kitchen composed of elegant design and technologies at IFA 2017 that took place in Germany. The kitchen, a result of collaboration with three companies, drew a lot of attention with Family Hub refrigerator at the central point for an IoT-based built-in kitchen system that enables convenient management of food, ingredient, family communication and even entertainment.

“Built-in as a New Driving Force for CE Business”

Samsung has been expanding its built-in appliances business in not only Europe, but also North America, Asia and other parts of the world. Samsung showcased new products this year in cooperation with Dacor, a North American premium built-in appliances company which Samsung acquired last year.

“B2B and IoT are the new driving force for us to overcome the stagnated global CE market,” said BK Yoon, CEO of the CE Business at Samsung Electronics, at IFA 2017. “In three years, we will raise our competitive edge by becoming the top-tier in the North American built-in appliances market.”

BK Yoon, CEO of the CE Business at Samsung Electronics, introduces one of the Column Refrigerators of “Modernist Collection”, a new suite of sophisticated luxury appliances of Dacor, at the launch event on March in the U.S.

People, this is a cooking top attracting people’s attention at an electronics show – a STOVE. Of course we need to talk about it. So, we got together with the engineers behind this genius idea. So, how did the latest innovation in flames come to be?

“Is the thing on or not?”

When using an induction cooktop, many users find it difficult to ‘see’ if it is heating properly. This has been more of a disadvantage than a feature. Users can press the buttons on the stove to control the heat level, which is convenient, but it is not really possible to actually observe or feel it. Samsung’s response to this consumer insight is the Virtual Flame Technology, which mimics the visual feedback of gas stove flames to offer an intuitive display of the level of heat.

▲ This is what the Virtual Flame looks like

The Samsung Chef Collection Slide-In Range with Virtual Flame Technology ^TM was first released in the U.S. in June. Adding an analogue ‘sense of warmth’ to a digital induction cooktop, Virtual Flame Technology ^TM is going increasingly viral and attracting many customers.

Virtual Flame Technology ^TM reveals its presence by casting flame-like glows onto pots and pans when in use. As the heat level goes up, the image of flames gradually grow bigger and brighter, giving the feeling of using the familiar gas stove. Simply put, the virtual flames are a reflection, on the side of the pot or pan, of an LED (light emitting diode) lighting embedded in the cooktop’s surface. Sounds simple, right? Well, not really.

How hard can it be? Uh… very?

As easy as it may seem, this is actually a completely new concept of ‘flames’. Engineers had to overcome numerous technical challenges; applying LEDs to surfaces that heat up to very high temperatures, adjusting the angle of reflection for the lights and to make them look real, just to name a few.

Resists heat – check.

The first challenge was putting the lights in. Engineers first decided to reach out to colleagues with experience in the field. By cooperating with the colleagues that have worked on products with hot surfaces, they first listed out candidate materials with excellent heat resistance and heat generation characteristics. Then they selected the LED that can display the optimal colors of the flame. Numerous tests followed, with as many circumstances considered as possible. (Remember, Thomas Edison “just found 10 thousand ways that won’t work” before finding the right design for his light bulb.)

Dances on stainless steel pots and pans – check.

Now with the players in place, they needed to make the play work. And so came another series of ‘numerous’ tests. The Virtual Flame’s display differs depending on the characteristics of the stainless steel pots and pans used. This is because the flame is just a reflection of lights.

So, to make sure it provides helpful visual to its users, engineers optimized Virtual Flame Technology^TM by testing it on actual stainless steel pots and pans. Considering the fact that the first products featuring this new Virtual Flame Technology^TM would be released in the U.S., engineers had the most popular and commonly-used stainless steel items from the States flown in to the labs in Suwon – more than 30 of them.

Thanks to all the effort, Virtual Flame Technology proved to be one of the most distinctive features of the new Samsung Chef Collection Slide-In Range; despite it having nothing to do with heating the top, keeping the temperature consistent or anything like that. Developing its display gradually over 15 different stages, engineers finally had the flames as if it was the real thing – the flame even flickers when its on its 15^th stage.

Induction cooktop ranges already had been increasingly popular with their existing advantages: they’re energy-efficient; they do not burn oxygen; and they do not generate harmful substances when cooking. Now, thanks to these men and their god-knows-how-many discoveries of things that don’t work, we can now ‘see’ how hot it is, too.

* All functionality features, specifications and other product information provided in this article including, but not limited to, the benefits, design, pricing, components, performance, availability, and capabilities of the product may differ by region and are subject to change without notice or obligation.

** Sunyoung Ji and Jisoo Lee contributed to this article. Pictures by Sunyoung Ji.