Freescale takes number one position in Zigbee chipset market

The Zigbee is buzzing a lot in the market, its more true for Freescale. It has shipped 7 million units of ZigBee and IEEE802.15.4 chipsets in year 2008 to take number one ranking in this market. With this, Freescale garners a market share of 60% in IEEE802.15.4-based ICs.

Zigbee is extremely suitable for wireless sensors networks, wireless meter reading, home automation and industrial control and automation.

Since energy management is a global agenda, Zigbee and other IEEE802.15.4 devices has a bigger role to play in wireless energy meter and other household metering solutions. Through little market analysis we did, by year 2011, it can be estimated; the IEEE802.15.4 based chipset market demand might reach greater than 100 million units. Peak consumption of these devices may start in 2010 and continue up to 2015. In about 4/5 years of timeframe from 2009, there is a market demand for about 1 billion unit shipments.

The low power microcontroller with built in Zigbee transceiver is a right combination for the above said applications. Freescale has mastered both and ready to take on the market.

"We've seen high demand for our IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee products as wireless applications such as home entertainment control, smart energy, industrial and process control and monitoring continue their rapid growth," said Brett Black, manager of Freescale's Wireless Connectivity Operation. "Our customers need platform solutions that help them get to market quickly so they can keep pace with this growth and be ready to develop their next applications."

IEEE 802.15.4 has different variants; such similar technologies are ZigBee technology, RF4CE consortium, SynkroRF network technology and WirelessHART technology.

There is lot of scope for designers to research and develop interesting products by using these devices. It can be a simple home security system, centralized remote control, e- metering, and industrial sensor networking in the areas where wiring is not feasible and costly.