Ember ships 10 millionth ZigBee chip

BOSTON, USA: Ember has reached a key milestone in its quest to become the world's foremost provider of ZigBee technology for smart meters and Home Area Network (HAN) products when it became the first company to ship more than 10 million ZigBee wireless chips.

This milestone is reflected in the company's record revenues and sales bookings, making Ember well positioned for almost 300% annual revenue growth in 2010.

Ember's spectacular ramp has been driven by large-scale deployments of smart energy technologies by utilities, device manufacturers, and smart home products for applications in energy management and home security, monitoring and automation.

Whether it's in-home displays for energy management such as those from Control4 or Tendril, or home awareness systems like uControl and AlertMe, or smart meters from leaders such as Landis+Gyr and Itron, chances are that the slew of ZigBee smart energy products hitting the market are Ember-enabled.

"Energy management technologies like ZigBee are providing new ways to acquire and communicate energy data to consumers accurately, reliably and in real time. Ember's industry leading ZigBee chips and networking protocol software play a critical role in allowing consumers to monitor and change their energy consumption in ways that were not before possible," said Adrian Tuck, CEO of Tendril, an Ember partner and leading energy management technology provider.

Across the world, billions are being invested in smart grid programs as part of grid modernization and carbon emission control measures and ZigBee has become the chosen low-power wireless standard for advanced metering and HANs. Consequently, ZigBee chipset shipments are projected to reach as high as 192 million units in 2014, up from just over 5 million units in 2008, according to research firm West Technology Research Solutions.

"As a profitable company and market leader, Ember will continue investing to extend communications and control capabilities out to the billions of devices, appliances and equipment in buildings and homes where most energy efficiency goals will be achieved," said Bob LeFort, Ember CEO. "Smart meters and HAN devices now being equipped with ZigBee-standard Ember chips and networking software are helping create the EnerNet (Energy Network) globally."

Ember's ZigBee networking systems -- chips, ZigBee protocol software and tools -- simplify the complexity of integrating embedded software, networking and RF for developing low power, wireless products in smart energy, connected home and other remote monitoring and control applications. Ember has been an industry leader, future-proofing customers and partners with the most advanced features.