Analysis and Forecast: embedded RF bulb market will take off in 2013

IMS, a market research firm, predicts that 2013 will be the year when the embedded RF enabled bulbs will take off, and more and more manufacturers are planning to launch new lighting products that support a variety of wireless technologies. According to the agency recently released lighting control networking opportunities report estimates that in 2013 RF shipments and embedded lighting remote control collocation shipments will exceed 600 thousand units, the figure in 2017 will further grow to 11 million 700 thousand.

IMS Research pointed out that the dynamic growth of embedded RF lighting market from multiple directions, of which the most important is to use intelligent mobile phone to control the lighting function, in addition to control at home, some systems also provide users of home lighting remote control functions from the outside. The agency said that during the forecast period, most embedded RF bulb lighting systems can be remotely controlled by mobile applications or cloud services.

In the current market although there are home lighting control system support remote control, but for the majority of consumers are still too expensive; IMS Research argues that when the future price is more close to the people to embedded RF lighting standards, will make the home application permeability increased gradually.

IMS Research analyst Phillip Maddocks said: "we have seen the support Insteon specification RF / power line (Powerline) technology and LiFX LED lighting system lighting wisdom successfully come out and get a large investment in a short period of time, show the potential of the market. In addition, a number of first-line lighting suppliers are also planned in the end of 2012 and 2013 will be similar to the consumer market system. "

At the technical level, at present most of the embedded RF lighting system such as Insteon, is the exclusive specifications or specially developed 802.15.4 software stack; according to NXP semiconductors (NXP), pointed out that there is a supplier of Greenwave using NXP JenNet-IP protocol Reality show an open platform, also can make the other semiconductor device support.

ZigBee association also recently published ZigBee Light Link standard to create lighting applications, the brightness and chroma of the LED lighting control. It is understood that there are a number of first-line LED lighting products manufacturers, including OSRAM (Osram) and PHILPS (Philips), have been introduced using the new specification ZigBee certified device.

"In the next few years, will be formed by several different ecosystems around the industrial products, the rise of the mainstream standard until Maddocks pointed out:"; "because ZigBee Light Link agreement can obtain support and interoperability, IMS Research believes that by 2017, ZigBee will become the mainstream standard of wireless lighting system, lighting and occupy embedded RF the controller 38% in 2010 to 2017 total shipments. "