ZigBee Alliance announces 27 new member companies

San Ramon, CA—The ZigBee Alliance reports that 27 new member companies recently joined its organization, bringing its total membership to more than 70 companies.

By Control Engineering Staff May 18, 2004

San Ramon, CA— The ZigBee Alliance reports that 27 new member companies recently joined its organization, bringing its total membership to more than 70 companies.

The new member companies include: ADCUS Inc.; Airbee Wireless; American Power Conversion; Atalum SA; Brunelco Electronic Engineering BV; CCL/ITRI; Daintree Networks Inc.; Frontline Test Equipment Inc.; Galeha; Grundfos Management; Insta Elektro GmbH; Institute for Information Industry; Jennic Ltd.; Korwin; LG Electronics Inc.; NEC Engineering Ltd.; OTSL Inc.; Polaris Networks; Renesas Technology Corp.; Rincon Research Corp.; Sensicast Systems Inc.; Siemens Building Automation; Silicon Wave Inc.; ST Microelectronics; Telecom Italia; TÜV Rheinland; and VIA Networking Technologies Inc.

ZigBee also announced that its current member, Ember Corp., has upgraded its membership status to the “promoter” level. This position gives Ember a seat on ZigBee’s board of directors, where it will join Honeywell, Invensys, Mitsubishi Electric, Motorola, Philips, and Samsung. Board membership will enable Ember to contribute to developing a successful standard, as well as contribute to decisions on ZigBee’s activities.

Representing a broad spectrum of industries, the alliance’s members are working to help shape the wireless market by defining the specification; collaborating on new standards-based technology for monitoring automation and control products; and leveraging their collective worldwide market presence to bring a new reliable, low-cost, low-power wireless communication solution to the market.

ZigBee says that adding these new members, which doubles the alliance’s original membership, demonstrates the worldwide interest in its specification, and expands the pool of potential applications that will result from their implementations of the new technology.

“The ZigBee Alliance is thrilled to have so many leading companies from around the world and from across a range of market segments bring their expertise to the alliance,” says Bob Heile, ZigBee’s chairman. “The growth rate of our membership has exceeded our initial expectations, and clearly shows the increasing market support for the technology. Our members have the unique opportunity to contribute to the initial specification of the ZigBee technology, which we expect to ratify later this year, as well as to influence the organization’s leadership and broaden our reach.”

ZigBee is reportedly the only standards-based technology designed to address the unique needs of low-cost, low-power, wireless sensor networks for remote monitoring, home control, and building automation network applications in the industrial and consumer markets. In a recent study by West Technology Research Solutions LLC (WTRS), its analysts estimated that it soon will be common to find as many as 100 ZigBee chips around the house and in devices ranging from light switches to home security systems to landscaping control.

The alliance also isailable at https://www.zigbee.com/events/MemberMeetingMay2004.asp .

Leading companies who want to have input on developing the ZigBee specification and create ZigBee products can join by visiting https://www.zigbee.org/join/ .

Control Engineering Daily News DeskJim Montague, news editorjmontague@reedbusiness.com