April 22, 2018 at 18:22Silicon Labs includes Z-Wave in its arsenal of radio technology
Last week, a deal between Silicon Labs and Sigma Designs on the purchase of a Z-Wave business was completed. In fact, all the developments, services and employees of Sigma Designs related to Z-Wave (and Sigma Designs had two more directions: PLC chips and media chips for STB consoles) were transferred to SiLabs.
The deal was in preparation for a year, and the deal was worth about $ 240 million.
Even non-specialists can see that Z-Wave has become the most popular protocol in the DIY segment and is rapidly breaking into the security systems market. It is enough to compare how CES looked this year and three-four years ago: if three years ago the “islands” of Z-Wave and ZigBee, which were opposite each other, were about the same size, introducing unhappy consumers into a stupor with their similar proposals, then this year ZigBee was almost invisible, and the “island” of Z-Wave resembled a big city.
This does not mean that ZigBee is no longer used, or that it is leaving the market. It’s just that Sigma Designs and the Z-Wave Alliance were able to make the Z-Wave protocol an independent brand recognized by consumers in the US and Europe. At the same time, the manufacturers of ZigBee devices, barely united by the alliance, did not seem to even set such a goal, and use the protocol as just transport in their decisions, without investing in protocol marketing and developing the ZigBee ecosystem.
Even at the Moscow Hi-Tech Building in 2017, the Z-Wave logo was replete with every third stand, and ZigBee was not visible at all, although the technology itself is no less popular.
We can say with confidence that Sigma Designs was able to bring together many strong manufacturers around Z-Wave, forming together a powerful ecosystem with the highest level of compatibility among themselves.
As one of the leaders among chip makers for IoT, SiLabs understand how to develop protocols, how to attract and train specialists to work with their chips. Silicon Labs also has a vision of a “super-protocol” solution combining several technologies in one chip at once.
Z-Wave will perfectly complement Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and will stand next to the actually failed Thread and going into a clean ZigBee transport.
In the end, giving manufacturers the opportunity to use Z-Wave and ZigBee at the same time and in a transparent way is a great idea!
Many will say why they need Z-Wave. There is BLE, which will soon become cooler. There are 6LowPAN and NB-IoT who will come and kill everyone in this market. But this is all about the future - we have already seen more than once how the emergence of a cool standard either does not lead to the appearance of new products at all (Thread-devices, where are you?) Or it takes 2-3 years before the first 10-15 devices appear and two more before the appearance of a whole line (this happens, for example, with HomeKit). During this time, Z-Wave itself will change. Oncoming traffic takes place: Z-Wave increases range and speed, reducing already low power consumption, and will soon be in the same segment where Bluetooth LE and others like it from the class of more energy-consuming, but faster protocols move.
For those who have read up to this point, but still do not know what Z-Wave is, I advise you to read the old but still relevant article A little about Z-Wave technology .
For Z-Wave, the event is uniquely positive. SiLabs is not one of those companies that buy to ruin. I am sure that in 2018 we will see the first announcements, and by mid-2019 the chips of the “radio harvesters” themselves, including several protocols immediately under the dome of the general SDK, will be announced.
Over the past few years, Sigma frankly did not have enough resources for the development of the protocol, for implementation, there was not enough FAE. Rumors say SiLabs will definitely fix that - in terms of Sigma Designs scale, the new Z-Wave department will receive almost unlimited resources in its own hands and many FAEs for working with clients.
In terms of reliability, this is also an important step. SiLabs is not just a more reliable and experienced manufacturer compared to Sigma Designs. SiLabs will probably be able to more successfully negotiate with market players on multiple source chip manufacturing. For some time, Sigma Designs collaborated with the Japanese Mitsumi, but then Z-Wave again became a single source chip, which became an obstacle for some projects of large telecom operators.
{UPD}
Along with the move to the SiLabs platform, the SDK and developer tools became available to anyone who registered. Not only in words, but also in deed, SiLabs shows a change in the Z-Wave development vector.
{/ UPD}
All Sigma Designs resources have already moved to Silicon Labs.
Short introduction
Detailed description Z-Wave
Portal tech. support
So far, Z-Wave has evolved as a protocol brand. Since 2014, this has been the goal-oriented policy of Sigma Designs: all devices on Z-Wave chips had to be certified for compatibility and had to wear the proud Z-Wave or Z-Wave Plus logo both on the device itself and on the box. Chips Z-Wave use except for creating devices Z-Wave also became impossible.
Obviously, this added recognition to Z-Wave and “hit” the price of the Sigma Designs asset, which soon became the main asset.
Will Silicon Labs pursue the same policy? Is not a fact. Strict restrictions on the use of the chip prevent the manufacturer from selling these very chips. Silicon Labs may even consider it possible to open parts of the protocol that are not yet open (see Z-Wave protocol becomes open) They understand that it is not the protocol itself that is important, but the decisions on it.
By the way, it is interesting that around the same time, the Ring company, which in addition to making intercom calls makes a decision on Z-Wave and is one of the main customers of Sigma Designs, was bought by Amazon for 1 billion. This means that a complete consumer decision is, of course, more valuable than the technology on which it is based.
The deal was in preparation for a year, and the deal was worth about $ 240 million.
Why does Silicon Labs need Z-Wave?
Even non-specialists can see that Z-Wave has become the most popular protocol in the DIY segment and is rapidly breaking into the security systems market. It is enough to compare how CES looked this year and three-four years ago: if three years ago the “islands” of Z-Wave and ZigBee, which were opposite each other, were about the same size, introducing unhappy consumers into a stupor with their similar proposals, then this year ZigBee was almost invisible, and the “island” of Z-Wave resembled a big city.
This does not mean that ZigBee is no longer used, or that it is leaving the market. It’s just that Sigma Designs and the Z-Wave Alliance were able to make the Z-Wave protocol an independent brand recognized by consumers in the US and Europe. At the same time, the manufacturers of ZigBee devices, barely united by the alliance, did not seem to even set such a goal, and use the protocol as just transport in their decisions, without investing in protocol marketing and developing the ZigBee ecosystem.
Even at the Moscow Hi-Tech Building in 2017, the Z-Wave logo was replete with every third stand, and ZigBee was not visible at all, although the technology itself is no less popular.
We can say with confidence that Sigma Designs was able to bring together many strong manufacturers around Z-Wave, forming together a powerful ecosystem with the highest level of compatibility among themselves.
As one of the leaders among chip makers for IoT, SiLabs understand how to develop protocols, how to attract and train specialists to work with their chips. Silicon Labs also has a vision of a “super-protocol” solution combining several technologies in one chip at once.
Z-Wave will perfectly complement Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and will stand next to the actually failed Thread and going into a clean ZigBee transport.
In the end, giving manufacturers the opportunity to use Z-Wave and ZigBee at the same time and in a transparent way is a great idea!
Many will say why they need Z-Wave. There is BLE, which will soon become cooler. There are 6LowPAN and NB-IoT who will come and kill everyone in this market. But this is all about the future - we have already seen more than once how the emergence of a cool standard either does not lead to the appearance of new products at all (Thread-devices, where are you?) Or it takes 2-3 years before the first 10-15 devices appear and two more before the appearance of a whole line (this happens, for example, with HomeKit). During this time, Z-Wave itself will change. Oncoming traffic takes place: Z-Wave increases range and speed, reducing already low power consumption, and will soon be in the same segment where Bluetooth LE and others like it from the class of more energy-consuming, but faster protocols move.
For those who have read up to this point, but still do not know what Z-Wave is, I advise you to read the old but still relevant article A little about Z-Wave technology .
How will a change of ownership affect Z-Wave?
For Z-Wave, the event is uniquely positive. SiLabs is not one of those companies that buy to ruin. I am sure that in 2018 we will see the first announcements, and by mid-2019 the chips of the “radio harvesters” themselves, including several protocols immediately under the dome of the general SDK, will be announced.
Over the past few years, Sigma frankly did not have enough resources for the development of the protocol, for implementation, there was not enough FAE. Rumors say SiLabs will definitely fix that - in terms of Sigma Designs scale, the new Z-Wave department will receive almost unlimited resources in its own hands and many FAEs for working with clients.
In terms of reliability, this is also an important step. SiLabs is not just a more reliable and experienced manufacturer compared to Sigma Designs. SiLabs will probably be able to more successfully negotiate with market players on multiple source chip manufacturing. For some time, Sigma Designs collaborated with the Japanese Mitsumi, but then Z-Wave again became a single source chip, which became an obstacle for some projects of large telecom operators.
{UPD}
Along with the move to the SiLabs platform, the SDK and developer tools became available to anyone who registered. Not only in words, but also in deed, SiLabs shows a change in the Z-Wave development vector.
{/ UPD}
Where to read?
All Sigma Designs resources have already moved to Silicon Labs.
Short introduction
Detailed description Z-Wave
Portal tech. support
Protocol is not the most important thing
So far, Z-Wave has evolved as a protocol brand. Since 2014, this has been the goal-oriented policy of Sigma Designs: all devices on Z-Wave chips had to be certified for compatibility and had to wear the proud Z-Wave or Z-Wave Plus logo both on the device itself and on the box. Chips Z-Wave use except for creating devices Z-Wave also became impossible.
Obviously, this added recognition to Z-Wave and “hit” the price of the Sigma Designs asset, which soon became the main asset.
Will Silicon Labs pursue the same policy? Is not a fact. Strict restrictions on the use of the chip prevent the manufacturer from selling these very chips. Silicon Labs may even consider it possible to open parts of the protocol that are not yet open (see Z-Wave protocol becomes open) They understand that it is not the protocol itself that is important, but the decisions on it.
By the way, it is interesting that around the same time, the Ring company, which in addition to making intercom calls makes a decision on Z-Wave and is one of the main customers of Sigma Designs, was bought by Amazon for 1 billion. This means that a complete consumer decision is, of course, more valuable than the technology on which it is based.