Release Date

1Q 2011

Product Code

VM-154-106

Price

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The market for IEEE 802.15.4 Integrated Circuits (IC) has progressed through a period of unsteady shipment growth over the past eighteen months. Impacted by the global recession, adoption remains in the early stages, although expansion has resumed after a downturn in 2009. Protocol standards and specification development are ongoing in a number of areas and applications, but adoption continues to be driven by the networking and application standards and specifications already available. ZigBee, WirelessHART, 6loWPAN, and ISA100.11a all use 802.15.4 ICs at the physical layer.

Target markets are moving to 802.15.4 IC-based connectivity at differing rates, and in some areas new and emerging specifications and offerings still challenge the potential wide-scale adoption of 802.15.4 in some applications. To no small degree, it is the ability of the leading 802.15.4 IC vendors to ensure that their products are able to support application and device development that will help bring about adoption.

Market competition for 802.15.4 ICs extends not just between 802.15.4 players, but also among vendors offering a range of proprietary or rival standards. In addition, adoption of IEEE 802.15.4 silicon does not always mean an acceptance of standardized communications and networking protocols and software. Proprietary offerings on 802.15.4 IC still comprise a large share of 802.15.4 IC shipments, and these offerings are considered in this study.

The nature of the 802.15.4 IC market places great importance on the ability of 802.15.4 vendors to deliver products and support that will enable their customers to quickly and effectively bring wireless communications to their own products. This 1Q 2011 edition of the 802.15.4 IC Vendor Matrix evaluates leading 802.15.4 IC vendors by comparing them across a range of key attributes. The goal is to provide an impartial assessment of the vendor landscape from the standpoint of technological prowess and business execution.

In the year since the last edition of this study, the contraction of the 802.15.4 IC vendor landscape has continued, most notably with NXP Semiconductor's acquisition of Jennic. That leaves the market increasingly populated by large, publicly traded integrated semiconductor manufacturers, such as Texas Instruments Inc., and NXP with multiple wireless IC offerings alongside their 802.15.4 products. Meanwhile, some more specialist players continue to hold their standing in the market. One example is Ember, while others, such as GreenPeak Technologies, are included for the first time.

Since the previous study, new products have been considered and launched. It is notable that 802.15.4 IC design and product offerings continue to progress, with advancements in power consumption, Receive (Rx) sensitivity, and System-on-Chip (Soc) form factor availability, among other improvements.

Criteria used to develop this Vendor Matrix are related to product and company characteristics that serve as proxies for vendor performance in the two areas of Innovation and Implementation. Numerical scores are aggregated, weighted, and analyzed to provide overall rankings, which are assigned to each vendor on the Innovation and Implementation axes.

Innovation

- Product Feature Set (40% weight)
- Device power consumption
- Rx sensitivity
- Memory sizes offered, if any
- Microcontroller Unit (MCU) offered, if any

Form Factor Integration and Variety (30% weight)

- SoC availability
- Variety of form factors/SKUs offered
- Modules offered, if any

Protocol Stack Availability (30% weight)

- Number and scope of protocol stacks offered
- Vendor-developed proprietary protocol stack availability
- Additional consideration given to technology differentiators, such as support for energy harvesting

Implementation

The three Implementation scoring criteria and their associated weighting are:

Overall Market Position (50% weight)

- Perceived market share and position in the market relative to competitors
- Vendor size (by revenue or number of employees) and financial strength, health, and backing
- Length of time in IEEE 802.15.4 IC market

Vertical Market Focus (20% weight)

- Number/breadth of vertical markets and applications served or targeted
- Level of vendor specialization in specific vertical markets and applications

Customer Support (30% weight)

- Training and customer support events offered
- Documentation provided
- Tools/development platforms offered
- Discussion/community forums offered

Scoring

Vendors receive a "rating score" for each ABI Research-defined criterion under Implementation and Innovation. These scores range from 0 to 100 and are based on available information as well as ABI Research assumptions. Points are awarded in 1.0 increments. For example, a score of 89.0 is possible within a given criterion.

Each criterion (and its score) is weighted based on ABI Research's opinion of each criterion's level of influence on and importance to the overall assessment of Innovation and Implementation. The number of criteria for Innovation and Implementation may vary; however, this does not impact vendor ranking. Vendors receiving better scores in higher-weighted criteria will benefit in terms of an improved overall position via higher Innovation and Implementation scores. Lower scores in higher weighted categories will result in a weaker overall placement due to the impact of the weighting.

The rating scores assigned to each criterion are added to determine a "raw total score" for Implementation and Innovation. A mathematical formula is then applied to adjust for the 0 to100 rating system and the number of criteria so that vendors can be positioned along the x- and y-axes (with a maximum score of 100 for Implementation and Innovation). The mathematical formula does not impact vendor ranking.

It is ABI Research's policy not to publicly disclose vendors' individual scores for each criterion. However, we will accept requests to discuss a vendor's ranking with that same vendor.

Rankings

After individual scores are established for Innovation and Implementation using the above criteria, an overall vendor score is established using the Root Mean Square (RMS) method. The resulting overall scores are then ranked and used for percentile comparisons.

The RMS method, in comparison with a straight summation or average of individual Innovation and Implementation values, rewards companies for outstanding performance. For example, using this method, a company with an Innovation score of 9 and an Implementation score of 1 would rank considerably higher than a company with a score of 5 in both areas, despite the mean score being the same. ABI Research believes this is appropriate as the goal of these matrices is to highlight those companies that stand out from the others.