Ember today announced continued global expansion with the opening of new international facilities and the signing of new international customers and distributors. The company also announced some major milestone achievements for the first half of 2005 to further strengthen Ember’s position in the ZigBee wireless networking market. ZigBee is an embedded wireless network standard that solves the unique needs of remote monitoring and control, and sensor network applications.
Ember opened a new research and business facility in Cambridge, England, to accommodate expansion of the company’s radio IC development team, as well as a business development team serving Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
On the new customer front, Ember has announced new business with a U.S. government defense agency, valued at more than $1 million. Details of the defense application will be announced in a subsequent news release. In addition, Raymarine, the U.K.-based developer of marine electronics, is now shipping its Ember-enabled wireless autopilot system unveiled in February.
Ember also announced that two major Asian distributors – Memec (Asia-Pacific) Ltd. in China and MJL Technologies Ltd. in South Korea – will distribute and market Ember’s ZigBee wireless semiconductor systems to OEM customers in that region.
“One measure of an industry standard’s market success is its adoption across all regions of the world. Ember’s growing base of international customers, partners and offices demonstrates that ZigBee is achieving that goal,” said Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance.
Ember’s international expansion caps a significant growth spurt in 2005 during which the company achieved a string of market-making milestones. These achievements include:
Next-generation products:
- Ember EM250, the industry’s first ZigBee-on-a-chip solution;
- Ember EM260, a new low-power ZigBee network co-processor.
New customers:
- 50 new design wins were added in the first half of 2005.
New partners:
- Microcontroller partners – Texas Instruments and Atmel;
- Development tool partner – Tendril Networks.
New software:
- EmberZNet 2.0, Ember’s next-generation ZigBee-compliant networking stack.
New tools:
- Ember WorkBench 1.0, a development tool suite for embedded ZigBee applications;
- Jumpstart Development Kit, an entry-level development kit.
More ZigBee developers:
- More than 175 certified developers have attended Ember University;
- Ember’s platform (including chips, software and tools) will be used for hands on training in Las Vegas, October 3-5 at the ZigBee Developers’ Conference in conjunction with CABA’s Connected@Home2005.
“With major customers like Philips Lighting, Eaton, Control4, Raymarine, NURI, rolling out Ember-enabled ZigBee products, the market is set accelerate rapidly over the next several years. We are also getting ready to announce more major customers in the coming weeks,” said Venkat Bahl, Ember’s vice president of marketing.
About ZigBee: Wireless Control That Simply Works
The ZigBee Alliance is an association of companies working together to enable reliable, cost-effective, low-power, wirelessly networked, monitoring and control products based on an open global standard. The ZigBee Alliance is a rapidly growing, non-profit industry consortium of leading semiconductor manufacturers, technology providers, OEMs, and end-users worldwide. Membership is open to all. Additional information can be found at www.zigbee.org.
About Ember Corporation
Ember Corporation develops ZigBee-compliant wireless semiconductor solutions that help automate homes, make buildings consume less energy, enable manufacturing plants to run with fewer breakdowns, and keep the country’s borders and infrastructure safe and secure. With more than 120 customers, Ember’s vision is to help create an “Internet of things” by enabling the eight billion microcontrollers built into products each year to support low-cost, low-power networking applications in any industry. Headquartered in Boston with offices and distributors worldwide, the company is a lead promoter of the ZigBee Alliance and its platform is the National Technical Systems’ (NTS) “Golden Suite” for 802.15.4/ZigBee interoperability testing. For more information, please visit www.ember.com.
