According to research unit IDC data, by 2020, the global IoT terminal equipment will reach 9.4 million units. As promising applications of mesh network will be urgent, Silicon Labs acquires Sigma Designs in April 2018. Z-Wave Business Unit.
Z-Wave is the technology of smart homes in the mesh network. Chen Xiongji, senior marketing manager of Silicon Labs Asia Pacific, points out that the technology has developed more than 2,400 kinds of terminal equipment imported worldwide, and a total of 100 million devices are operating in the market, and in 2017 The annual sales of Z-Wave have reached 1.2 billion U.S. dollars, and the market is quite large.
Chen Xiongji further explained that compared to other wireless connection technologies, Z-Wave has a relatively complete ecosystem, and all Z-Wave-certified products can communicate with each other, both old and new. In addition, compulsory certification is also important for Z-Wave. Features, through the threshold of mandatory certification, the technology brings high security, high compatibility and advantages of friendly developers.
Huang Zhongyu, application engineering manager at Silicon Labs, pointed out that currently partners have connected the Z-Wave-enabled devices to the bridges of Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Homekit through the Gateway to implement voice-controlled smart homes. The function of the device.
It is worth noting that in addition to the smart home market, Silicon Labs will also expand Z-Wave technology to the commercial market in the future. Although this technology has high security, high degree of compatibility and other advantages, it is quite suitable for commercial field applications. However, due to considering the complexity involved in connection status and the consideration of maintaining low cost, the company has been focusing on the development of the smart home market in the past few years. Huang Zhongyu stated that at present, the company has begun to focus on small-scale commercial markets. In the future, this connection technology can have more innovative application possibilities.
In the future, Silicon Labs will continue to increase the penetration rate of Z-Wave in the Asian market. Huang Zhongyu shared that it seems that the biggest growth will be South Korea and Japan will be the next. Although the market demand is huge, the system in the smart home area is still very cluttered. Therefore, the market development will be relatively time-consuming. In Taiwan, the company has also started cooperation with the ITRI and telecom operators. There will also be related product launches in the short term.