Z-Wave Plans First Outreach to Japanese Firms at CEATEC

The Z-Wave Alliance will host a summit in Chiba, Japan, this week, as part of an effort to expand into the Japanese market at CEATEC, Marketing Director Mary Miller told Consumer Electronics Daily. The move into Japan follows an announcement by the alliance at CEDIA last month that it had certified its 400th product, the Vera gateway from Mi Casa Verde. Certification ensures that products bearing the Z-Wave logo “will work with every other one” in a connected home and will remain compatible with future products, she said.

At CEATEC, Z-Wave is holding a summit with NTT Docomo Oct. 7 at the Manhattan Hotel, Miller said, with hopes of attracting 70 companies interested in developing products for the wireless control alliance. Miller said the first outreach to Japanese companies is “broad based” so the alliance doesn’t come across as “exclusionary.” Z-Wave products on the market include lights, locks, monitors, sensors, thermostats, controllers, gateways and irrigation devices. The summit is designed to let companies know what Zigbee products look like, how people are using the technology and how products work together, she said. As for applications targeting the Japanese market, she said, convenience, energy savings and time savings hold global appeal, but since Japanese consumers tend to be early technology adopters, “I expect we're going to get a lot of quick uptake there."

The biggest challenge for Z-Wave, a 10-year-old wireless home control protocol, has been consumer awareness, Miller said. Energy management, “on the tip of everyone’s tongue,” has been an important recent driver for the technology in relation to lighting and temperature control products. She said Z-Wave has taken off at retail over the past 18 months to two years at Radio Shack, Best Buy and Lowe’s stores and online at Amazon, Newegg and TigerDirect. Miller credited the bump to consumer advertising, including TV spots by Ingersoll Rand’s Schlage brand for its home security and remote management products, and to an iPhone app for the Schlage product that Apple featured in some of its commercials. Good relationships with retailers like Lowe’s for standard door locks enabled the company to get “good shelf space” and start building the electronic lock business. “One product leverages another,” she said.

The TV ads have helped “stimulate the imaginations of consumers,” Miller said. Many consumers still think of home automation as affordable only to the very wealthy, she said. But mainstream customers can relate to applications that allow a user to look in on an aging parent or get a text alert when a child gets home from school, she said.

Energy management is expected to be the next driver for Z-Wave connected homes, Miller said. She cited Aeon Labs’ home energy meter, a “low-cost” energy meter that wirelessly reports current wattage and kilowatt/hour usage to central gateways handling energy monitoring and management. Also for energy-management are BuLogic’s smart grid home controller, which communicates with utility companies’ advanced metering products and the RCS Resource Meter series of networked power meters that provide consumption data, she said. With awareness growing for Z-Wave, the next step is to become “more affordable and better distributed,” Miller said.