Ember's Smart Grid Technology Fuels Best Year Yet
Ember the connected home solutions provider has declared 2010 has its best year yet. With over 10 million ZigBee chips shipped last year, they have become the first to have shipped that amount in one year. Ember attributes their growth to the strategic partnerships that they have formed and the increase in smart meter implementation worldwide. Their main areas of growth were in North America and Europe mainly the UK where the country’s main utility supplier British Gas is planning to provide a million customers with smart electricity and gas meters.
"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 Gas is 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."