SAN DIEGO — Annual shipments of IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee wireless chipsets doubled last year and are forecast to reach a cumulative 2.5 billion chipset sales within the next five years, according to a report from global technology research firm ON World. The smart home market is expected to utilize over two-thirds of the IEEE 802.15.4 chipsets at this time.

“Growth for ZigBee solutions has accelerated over the last two years with smart home and smart lighting experiencing exponential growth,” said Mareca Hatler, ON World’s research director.

Key developments include plummeting costs for low-power wireless chipsets, smart lighting adoption increasing by 2,900 percent, Nest’s acquisition by Google, ZigBee 3.0 unified profiles, the IPv6 wireless mesh Thread specification, and a ZigBee/Thread cooperation announcement.

Additionally, ZigBee-enabled smart home hubs are increasingly available from popular retail outlets that are seeding the ZigBee smart home market for future growth. Some of these include Belkin (WeMo), Staple’s Connect, Iris (Lowe’s), SmartThings (Samsung), and Wink (Home Depot).

ON World’s report, “ZigBee Lights Up the Internet of Things – 11th edition” analyzes the evolving market forces, technology advances, and competitive dynamics for 22 ZigBee markets and provides five-year forecasts for 802.15.4/ZigBee and competing alternatives including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave, EnOcean, and others. It also includes key findings from a recently completed survey with 1,000+ consumers and an analysis of hundreds of ZigBee/802.15.4 products.

More information and a free executive summary is available at ON World’s website.

Publication date: 7/20/2015

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