Z-wave Active Layout And Marching Into The Commercial Application Market

In combination with Z-Wave mesh network technology and interoperable product features, intelligent family R & D personnel can obtain large, diverse ecosystem and full range end node (End-Node) technology options, providing vast business opportunities for millions of smart homes. Recently, Z-Wave has begun to enter the small business market, playing its advantage of low latency, low cost and high security.

According to IDC data from research institutions, the total number of terminal devices will reach 9 million 400 thousand by 2020. Because the application of promising mesh network will be very urgent, Silicon Labs (core technology) acquired the Z-Wave business division of Sigma Designs in April 2018.

Z-Wave is the technology of smart home in mesh network. Chen Xiongji, senior market manager of Silicon Labs Asia Pacific region, pointed out that more than 2400 kinds of terminal equipment have been imported to the world since the development of the technology. A total of one hundred million equipment are running in the market, and the total sales of Z-Wave in 2017 have reached US $1 billion 200 million, and the market size is quite large.

Chen Xiongji further explained that Z-Wave has a relatively complete ecological circle compared to other wireless networking technologies, and all Z-Wave - certified products can be interconnected both in new and old. In addition, mandatory authentication is also an important feature of Z-Wave. Through the threshold of mandatory authentication, the technology brings the advantage of high security, high compatibility and friendly developers.

Huang Zhongyi, the Silicon Labs application engineering manager, points out that currently partners have introduced Z-Wave devices to Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Homekit bridging (Bridge) through the gateway (Gateway) to implement the function of voice control smart home devices.

It is worth noting that in addition to the smart home market, Silicon Labs will expand the Z-Wave technology to the commercial market in the future. Although this technology has the advantages of high security and high compatibility, it is quite suitable for commercial field applications. However, due to the complexity of the connection and the consideration of maintaining low cost, the company has focused on the development of the smart home market in the past few years. Huang Zhongyi said that at present, the company has begun to pay attention to the small business market, and expects that the connection technology will have more innovative applications in the future.

Silicon Labs will continue to enhance Z-Wave penetration in the Asian market in the future. Huang Zhongyi shared that the biggest growth now appears to be South Korea, followed by Japan. Although the market demand is huge, the system in the smart home field is still very untidy, so the market development will be relatively time-consuming. In the Taiwan area, the company has started cooperation with the Research Institute and telecom operators, and there will also be related products in the near future.