The ZigBee™ Alliance, the industry association promoting the growth of a global, open standard for wireless control of devices, has admitted Siemens at the highest level of membership — Promoter level. As a result the company joins BM Group, Ember Corp., Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Honeywell, Mitsubishi Electric, Motorola, Philips, Samsung and Texas Instruments on the ZigBee Alliance Board of Directors.
Recently, there has been tremendous momentum in the ZigBee compliant platform supply ramp-up leading to consumer product availability during 2006. And Siemens’ support and leadership commitment to the Alliance comes on the heels of significant moves by several industry giants — earlier this year Texas Instruments completed its acquisition of Chipcon and there was the completion of a joint effort by STMicroelectronics and Ember to work together on ZigBee solutions.
“Siemens carefully investigated the various wireless control options available on the market and selected ZigBee because it offers a true, internationally recognized standard that fits well into the product strategies of several of our business units,” said Walter Weigel, vice president standardization and regulations of Siemens AG. “Siemens has great experience and vast knowledge in the field of automation that will also benefit ZigBee over the coming years.”