The Zigbee Alliance, an organization of hundreds of companies creating, maintaining, and delivering open, global standards for the Internet of Things (IoT), announced that Amazon will join its Board of Directors.
As IoT growth continues to accelerate, prominent companies in the tech industry are collaborating within the Zigbee Alliance to shape the direction of standards, ecosystems, and devices to offer users easy and enjoyable experiences they'll want to build upon within their homes and personal spaces. The decision by Amazon to join the Zigbee Alliance at the Board level is a strong message that the industry is focused on simplifying and adding convenience to the growing range of IoT devices available to customers.
"Customers tell us they want smart home experiences that are simple to setup, easy to control, and add convenience to the tasks they do every day,” said Christian Taubman, Director, Alexa Smart Home at Amazon. “Voice control with Alexa is helping remove the complexity of smart home, and there are even more ways we can help customers by ensuring their smart devices connect and work together seamlessly. We look forward to working with the Zigbee Alliance and its members to contribute to open standards for device interoperability that benefit our mutual customers."
Smart home satisfaction
Moving beyond its infancy, the smart home is taking hold and consumers are embracing IoT products as they continue to become easier to use. Manufacturers and standards organizations are bridging differences and breaking down barriers for the good of the entire industry. With voice services like Amazon Alexa and products such as the Amazon Echo family — which serves as the ‘brain’ or hub of choice in smart homes across the world — consumers can intuitively connect lights, locks, sensors, and more to broaden the conveniences around them.
"As an industry, we need to move quickly to help consumers add new devices effortlessly, and ensure they are getting a great experience in the Internet of Things,” said Tobin Richardson, President and CEO, Zigbee Alliance. “We’re proud to be attracting the best tech companies on the planet, and Amazon joins an impressive lineup of other industry leaders and innovators on the Board who work with the Zigbee Alliance’s open standards and community to deliver real value in the IoT.”
Hubs & ecosystems unite
Finding a common vision and mature, interoperable solutions within the Zigbee Alliance family of technologies, leading service providers and device manufacturers — such as Amazon, Comcast, Huawei, IKEA, Legrand, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Somfy, and Samsung SmartThings — have chosen to design and introduce devices based on the Zigbee Alliance’s wireless standards. In doing so, these companies offer consumers greater choice in building simpler, consistent, and reliable experiences. For instance, Amazon devices including the Echo Plus and new Echo Show feature a built-in smart home hub that easily connects to Zigbee-based light bulbs, door locks, sensors, and more. Now, customers can benefit from Frustration Free Setup and quickly connect new Zigbee products by simply saying “Alexa, discover my devices.”
"Pairing Amazon’s Alexa-based technology with the Zigbee Alliance’s prominent wireless standards makes a lot of sense for not only manufacturers looking to partake in the smart home, smart building, and connected city categories but more importantly for the consumers that must embrace and champion connected technology for it to grow by contributing value to our everyday lives,” said Mareca Hatler, Principal Analyst at ON World. “Our research projects Zigbee technology will ship in 85% of the 4.5 billion 802.15.4 units predicted to hit the market in 2023, and with Amazon as a Board contributor in the Alliance, it’s clear the market-movers are really pulling together and operating on a global level to steer everyone forward.”