Now is the Time for Service Providers to Enter Connected Home Space, Says Z-Wave Chip Maker

Now is the time for service providers looking to broaden their subscriber base to enter the connected home space, said Bill Scheffler, senior director-North American business development for Z-Wave at Sigma Designs, during a Parks Associates webcast Thursday. Prospective entrants to the market have to consider the right technology for mass consumer adoption and choose an established ecosystem with other partner companies for interoperability. Scheffler said Z-Wave is dominant among security providers in the connected home market.

Scheffler called the smartphone “the disrupter” in how consumers adapt to the world around them and said the smartphone has made it easy for consumers to use an app to control HVAC, lights, unlock doors and change door codes. Home control companies have reacted to the smartphone by creating new revenue models based around the smartphone, opening an era of “uncharted territory” for how consumers interact with their homes, he said.

Ten years ago, Scheffler said, alarm companies only interacted with customers when it related to a security issue, but now “they're helping you save money on your energy bill,” offering ways to manage light, shades and door locks in the home. Providers who have entered the home control market have found that their services are “sticky,” with customers looking to do more with the connected infrastructure, Scheffler said. “They're looking for more devices,” he said.

The number of small players entering the Z-Wave ecosystem has grown significantly over the past few years, Scheffler said. A growing number of consumers are willing to switch to a new security monitoring company if their current company doesn’t offer features such as email alerts, energy management and lighting automation functions, he said. Smart home system shipments are expected to grow by 600 percent in the next five years, according to ON World research, he said, and the technology is forecast to reach 38 million households worldwide by 2015. Over the past two years, nine out of the top 10 security panel suppliers have added wireless home automation to their portfolios, he said, and all the “major” residential security panel providers, including ADT, have Z-Wave built in. More than 800 product models are Z-Wave enabled, he said.

Sigma is now offering Z-Wave Next Gen, said Ben Garcia, senior field application engineer at Sigma Designs, to address customers’ needs for chips that offer speed to market, increased profitability and an improved consumer experience. The 500 series, named for the fifth generation of Z-Wave products from Sigma, has boosted range and cut standby power consumption by 70 percent so sensors with a two-year battery life can run for more than three years without a battery swap, he said. Sigma quadrupled the code memory footprint, shrinking to one from two the number of chips required for a Z-Wave solution, he said. A feature called Network Wide Inclusion allows next-gen Z-Wave devices to be physically moved around the network for a “more intuitive and simple” user experience.

Despite Sigma’s concentration on Z-Wave, Scheffler acknowledged there will be “no one winner of overall home control and connectivity” just as there are competing technologies in the cellphone, lighting and garage door opener markets. Add-on devices in a connected home will “naturally adapt to the preference of the gateway,” which could be Wi-Fi, Z-Wave, ZigBee or Bluetooth, he said. The energy and medical device markets are still in the “very early stages of growth,” he said. If those platforms are built into a gateway, devices will be developed around that technology in multiple channels, he said.

Regarding interoperability, Garcia said providers who want both ZigBee and Z-Wave in a gateway can get them through bridging solutions if they don’t want to commit to one platform. “Two protocols require a device that maps one to the other so they can operate together seamlessly,” he said. “Those products exist and are being developed as we speak.”