Z-Wave is making a huge change so it doesn’t get left behind in the smart home wars
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/19/21029661/zwave-open-standard-radios-smart-home-multiple-vendors-silicon-labs
Reported today in The Verge.
Z-Wave is making a huge change so it doesn't get left behind in the smart home wars
When Apple, Google, Amazon, and Zigbee announced that they were going to work together on a common smart home standard yesterday, one huge name was missing: Z-Wave, a system meant for low-power smart devices like locks and lightbulbs.
The competing smart home system has long been criticized by rivals as not truly being an open standard - despite outward appearances otherwise - and it's easy to imagine that's why it was left out. So today, The Z-Wave Alliance is making an announcement that would seem to fix that. It's going to open up a part of the standard that's long been locked down as a money-making scheme, theoretically turning Z-Wave into a fully open rival.
Until now, a single company - which just happens to own and develop Z-Wave - has been responsible for providing all of the chips for Z-Wave radios. That means there's no competition driving down prices, and if Z-Wave were to ever become truly dominant, that company, Silicon Labs, would be in a position to make a whole lot of money.
With today's change, Silicon Labs is going to start letting other companies make Z-Wave radios, too. That addresses the biggest ongoing complaint with Z-Wave: that Silicon Labs (and Sigma Designs, which owned Z-Wave for years before it) effectively had control over the entire ecosystem.
"I would acknowledge that that seemed to have been the only objection I was always confronted with," Mitchell Klein, executive director of the Z-Wave Alliance, said on a call with The Verge.
The goal is to eventually turn Z-Wave into a completely open standard. Even the Z-Wave Alliance - an apparent standards body, which seems to mostly be in charge of certifying device compatibility