Watch Out, Best Buy, Ikea Will Soon Sell Their Own HDTV System And It’s Awesome - Matt Burns via TechCrunch

IKEA has announced launching the Uppleva line of integrated HDTV and furniture: it’s genius, and completely supports my contention from yesterday that only two kinds of retailers are growing. One, like IKEA and Apple, are selling their own designs, more or less exclusively. The second are specialty purveyors of carefully curated goods, like Trader Joe’s.

The Uppleva line is going to be very successful, I predict, and opens the TV market to IKEA, and will hasten the demise of chains like Best Buy:

Matt Burns via TechCrunch

The new UPPLEVA line completely disrupts the big box store’s HDTV buying process with a high-dose injection of Ikea genius.

Ikea has yet to announce the nitty-gritty details around the UPPLEVA line including the price. The line will apparently hit key stores in Stockholm, Milan, Paris, Gdansk, and Berlin in June 2012. Come autumn it will arrive at additional stores in Sweden, Italy, France, Poland, Denmark, Spain, Norway, and Portugal with a more broad launch following in 2013.

The YouTube teaser lays out some basic spec concerning the HDTV. It seems up to the task with a 1080p LED LCD screen, 400Hz response time, and some sort of smart TV functionality — all good stuff. But the HDTV really doesn’t matter. Even though it has the specs of a high-end screen, Ikea could have employed a mid-range model and still made the same magic.

Ikea understands that everything needs to work together. This new product line from the Swedish retailer exemplifies the notion of an all-in-one system. Sure, this probably doesn’t appeal to audio heads or A/V geeks, but it brings a beautiful system that works to the masses. Like with everything else Ikea sells, the UPPLEVA system is completely customizable with a range of TV sizes and cabinet designs. Buyers probably still have to piece them together using those dumb keys, though.

IKEA is one of the few companies that can really battle Apple for the living room.

IKEA Urbanism: A New Era In Urban Design? — The Pop-Up City

Will the new era of architecture be the era of IKEA urbanism? IKEA has proposed to build a complete neighborhood in East London. The Swedish furniture giant tries to implement its ideas and concepts in new fields of knowledge and urbanism. After its injection of each single family’s interior with cheap design furniture and the introduction of the IKEA standard house by daughter company BoKlok, it seems to be time for a complete IKEA neighborhood, reports the Huffington Post, LandProp — also part of the IKEA group — is planning to build a neighborhood of 1,200 houses, shops, cafés and a 350-room hotel.