By 2024, Global Annual Shipments of 802.15.4 Mesh Chipsets will Reach 1 Billion.
Fifteen years of advances for power management, wireless mesh networking, application profiles and multi-protocol chipset integration are driving the 802.15.4 ecosystem to new heights. Within the next year, there will be a billion devices worldwide using 802.15.4 network protocols such as Zigbee, Thread or Wi-SUN.
IoT device manufacturers have fewer risks today due to chipset costs approaching $1 in high volumes and the emergence of multi-protocol chips that combine 802.15.4 wireless mesh networking and BLE. These new chips will soon be ubiquitous by leveraging BLE’s smartphone app integration with 802.15.4’s reliable mesh, security and advanced smart home profiles.
With dozens of 802.15.4 chipset suppliers today, there are several combo chips available from leading 802.15.4 chipset suppliers including Silicon Labs, Qorvo, NXP and Texas Instruments as well as innovators and newer entrants such as Qualcomm, Nordic Semiconductor and Redpine Signals.
With combination 802.15.4/BLE chipsets developers are seeing significant demand, lower product development costs, faster time to market and the ability to create new product categories. For example, Signify’s recently launched 802.15.4/BLE smart light bulbs give mass-market customers a hub-less smart lighting option that can be upgraded to a whole-home wireless mesh network later.
By 2024, global annual shipments of 802.15.4 mesh chipsets will reach 1 billion. Zigbee will make up the largest portion but protocols using IPv6 such as Thread and Wi-SUN will increase faster. Multi-protocol chipsets that include 802.15.4 and other technologies such as Bluetooth LE and/or WiFi will make up 1 in 4 by this time.
For this report (15th edition), we did an exhaustive investigation of the 802.15.4 ecosystem including phone interviews and surveys with component suppliers, manufacturers, service providers, distributors and end users targeting 20+ market segments.
We provide 6-year market size forecasts by product design (e.g., chipset/module), technology, frequency, topology, geography, chipset/module revenues and average sale price. The report also includes 802.15.4 chipset market shares, an in-depth value system analysis and 90+ company profiles.
Table of Contents
1. Executive Summary2. Report Scope3. Methodology
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Executive Summary
Wireless mesh sensor network standards have made 802.15.4 the predominant networking technology for the Internet of Things. Half a billion 802.15.4 mesh chips have been sold for smart homes and buildings, metering, smart cities, industrial automation and other IoT markets. Z-Wave, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and low power WiFi have been unsuccessful at slowing 802.15.4 market penetration. This success is demonstrated by leading consumer electronics manufacturers embedding 802.15.4 in their products including Amazon’s Echo Plus.
Adoption of smart home 802.15.4 wireless sensor networks (WSN) increased faster than BLE last year despite growing interest in BLE by new developers and the completion of Bluetooth Mesh. Today, device makers can choose 802.15.4/B LE combo chips that add little to their costs while providing the benefits of BLE smartphone integration and the sophistication of 802.15.4 for WSN.
Plummeting chip costs combined with the emergence of combo chips has reduced the risk associated with developing IoT solutions. This has resulted in manufacturers using 802.15.4 in a variety of popular consumer products including smart speakers, routers and webcams as well as sensors, controllers and hubs. It has also drawn new entrants to the 802.15.4 market such as Qualcomm and Nordic Semiconductor and resulted in several acquisitions. This is epitomized by Silicon Labs that has acquired half a dozen companies over the last few years including RTOS platform provider Micrium and Sigma Designs’ Z-Wave business.
By 2023, 4.5 billion cumulative 802.15.4 mesh devices will be sold worldwide. The majority of these will use smart home protocols such as Zigbee and Thread. However, other wireless mesh protocols such as Wi-SUN, JupiterMesh, WirelessHART and ISA100 Wireless have specific advantages for each of their respective markets including longer network range and high reliability.
A few of the latest developments for 802.15.4 markets include the following:
Smart Homes & Buildings:
- Dozens of mainstream CE products with embedded 802.15.4 including modems/set-top boxes by Arris, Comcast, Dish/Echostar, Technicolor and Verizon; WiFi routers by eero, Google, Linksys, Samsung, TP-Link and Extreme Networks; Nest’s webcams; and Amazon’s Echo Plus voice-controlled speaker that is also a smart home hub.
- Hundreds of Zigbee and 802.15.4 products are sold from retail consumer channels.
- Managed service platforms such as Comcast’s Xfinity Home with millions of subscribers.
- Increasing demand for wireless smart lighting platforms has resulted in acquisitions such as Current (GE) of Daintree and Osram of Digital Lumens.
- Smart lighting systems using 802.15.4 currently cover 1 billion square feet in offices, warehouses, factories, retail stores/malls, schools, universities and government buildings.
Smart Metering:
- Great Britain retailers are rolling out 50 million smart meters with plans to be completed within the next few years. Each household will have several Zigbee chips for hubs, electric/gas meters and in-home energy management devices.
- Japan ’s electric utilities are on track to have 68 million smart electric meters to be deployed by 2020 with the majority of these to have two 802.15.4g chips for the Wi-SUN compliant metering network and Home Area Network (HAN) interface.
Smart Cities:
- Florida Power & Light has 500,000 smart streetlights using an 802.15.4g compliant IPv6 network by Silver Spring (Itron), the largest smart lighting deployment to date.
- Silver Spring’s smart street lighting systems have also been deployed in major cities around the world including Bristol, Copenhagen, Chicago, Glasgow, Paris, Providence, Halifax and Kingston, Jamaica.
- Other 802.15.4 compliant smart city networking systems are available from CIMCON, CyanConnode, DimOnOff, Honeywell, Huawei, Landis+Gyr, Trilliant and others.
For this report (14th edition), we did an exhaustive investigation of the 802.15.4 ecosystem including phone interviews and surveys with component suppliers, manufacturers, service providers and distributors targeting 20+ market segments. We provide 6-year market size forecasts by product design (e.g., chipset/module), technology, frequency, topology, geography, chipset/module revenues and average sale price. The report also includes 802.15.4 chipset market shares, an in-depth value system analysis and 90+ company profiles.
Companies Mentioned
- Dotdot
- Fairhair Alliance
- JupiterMesh
- Nordic Semiconductor
- NXP
- Qorvo
- Qualcomm
- Redpine Signals.
- Signify
- Silicon Labs
- Smart Energy
- Texas Instruments
- The Thread Group
- Thread
- Wi-SUN Alliance
- Zigbee
