Ember, a leading provider of low-power wireless mesh networking technology, made 2010 its best year ever with record revenues and the shipment of more chips in 2010 than in all previous years combined. The milestone also made Ember the world’s first semiconductor company to ship more than 10 million ZigBee chips in a single year.
Ember’s strong growth was fueled by smart meter deployments worldwide, where Ember’s ZigBee chips and software play a critical role in enabling consumers and utilities to communicate in real time and together manage energy more efficiently, especially during peak demand.
Ember’s ZigBee networking solutions – chips, 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.
While Ember’s largest deployments took place in North America, the company also positioned itself for significant growth in Europe, where the technology was chosen for many of the largest smart meter projects across the continent. These include the UK’s first -large scale smart meter deployment, spearheaded by British Gas. British Gasis planning to provide a million customers with smart electricity and gas meters, along with touch-screen in-home energy management displays very shortly.
During the year, Ember also strengthened its European customer support and supply chain infrastructure by adding pan European channel partners to support the significant growth planned in the region.
In North America, Ember joined forces with other like minded industry leaders to help develop and grow the “connected home” market with the convergence of home automation, smart energy and the new security, monitoring and automation (SMA) space. Toward that goal, Ember co-founded the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC) and OpenSMA to establish a vibrant ecosystem that will focus on creating value for consumers while making the truly connected home a reality.
On the technology front, Ember previewed a new Internet Protocol (IP)-based low-power, wireless networking product. As part of the effort, Ember made significant contributions to the IETF working groups defining the new low-power routing standards, and joined the IPSO Alliance, an organization promoting the use of IP for smart objects around the world.
Ember’s leadership and performance were recognized through notable industry honors in 2010. Ember was named to the prestigious Inc. 5000 list, a compendium of the most entrepreneurial and fastest-growing companies in America. Also, Ember CEO Robert LeFort was named a 2010 Mass High Tech All-Star, an award that recognizes leaders in New England’s technology, business and innovation sectors.
“We are proud to be a part of the conversion that has started in the revitalization of electric grids worldwide. We look forward to driving the next phase in this conversion by enabling measurable benefits to consumers, the utilities and also the environment,” said Bob LeFort, CEO of Ember. “It is heartening to see empowered consumers benefit from useful information and be able to control and manage energy usage and many other functions in the connected home. This revolution is well on its way in the United States and is gathering irreversible momentum in Europe and Asia. It is exciting to be a part of such a meaningful transformation.”
ZigBee: Control your world
ZigBee is the global wireless language connecting dramatically different devices to work together and enhance everyday life. The ZigBee Alliance is a non-profit association of more than 340 members driving development of ZigBee wireless technology. The Alliance promotes world-wide adoption of ZigBee as the leading wirelessly networked, sensing and control standard for use in consumer electronic, energy, home, commercial and industrial areas. For more information, visit: www.ZigBee.org.
About Ember
Ember Corporation (www.ember.com) develops wireless mesh networking technology – chips, software and tools – for Smart Energy, connected homes, and many other monitoring and control applications enabling greener living and work environments. The Boston-based company is a promoter of the ZigBee Alliance with an IC design center in Cambridge, England, an office in Hong Kong and sales channels and distributors worldwide.
