LG and Samsung say their smart home apps will work with the other company's appliances and TVs in 2024, as part of the Home Connectivity Alliance formed in 2021
The smart home is all about interoperability these days. First came Matter, making Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung play nice …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is an alliance-led interoperability move alongside Matter, the industry standard introduced to address fragmented smart-home ecosystems. The earlier launch of Matter under the Connectivity Standards Alliance established the broader push; this development applies that logic to LG and Samsung’s appliance and TV ecosystems.
It matters because control surfaces—not just device radios—shape the daily smart-home experience. Samsung later extended SmartThings into vehicles through a Hyundai and Kia infotainment partnership, showing how a home platform can reach beyond its original device category.
First-order effects
- LG and Samsung customers can use either company’s smart-home app to manage the other’s compatible appliances and TVs once the promised support arrives.
- Both companies reduce a practical barrier for households that mix brands, while retaining their own apps as the primary customer interface.
Second-order effects
- Competing appliance and TV vendors face greater pressure to support common control paths or risk making mixed-brand homes feel less cohesive.
- The competitive emphasis shifts toward app experience, automation, and connected-service breadth rather than control of a closed hardware estate.
Third-order effects
- If cross-platform control becomes standard, smart-home differentiation is likely to move from device lock-in to the quality and reach of each company’s software ecosystem.
- The move reinforces a standards-and-certification model in which compatibility claims become more consequential; the later shared Matter certification acceptance by Apple, Google, and Samsung points in the same direction.
The trend: Smart-home vendors are progressively treating interoperability as table stakes while competing for the software layer that coordinates devices across the home and beyond it.