Can the New Semtech Partnership Help Z-Wave Expand Beyond the Smart Home?

In May 2026, the Z-Wave Alliance announced the addition of Semtech Corporation not only as a new member, but also to its Board of Directors. This marks the third silicon provider, alongside Silicon Labs and Trident IoT, to join the alliance, helping expand the ecosystem and development options available to Z-Wave device manufacturers. With Semtech on the board of directors, the company—with its vast experience in deploying wireless Internet of Things (IoT) technology through its Long Range (LoRa) Technology—will be able to help guide the Z-Wave Alliance in areas such as technical standards development, and also provide the alliance with strategic insights as it looks to expand its existing ecosystem beyond the smart home and consumers.   

This news is expected, given that Semtech had earlier announced a partnership with Trident IoT to integrate the latter’s Software Development Kit (SDK) and development tools with the former’s LoRa Plus transceivers. In the first phase of this partnership, Z-Wave will be the initial connectivity protocol to be introduced. As a result, this provides Semtech customers with more flexible options to deploy multiple protocols (i.e., LoRa and Z-Wave) on a single hardware.

This development suggests a new possible future where there is no longer any distinction between consumer home and enterprise-type IoT connectivity. In the past, this distinction was necessary as the different connectivity protocols possessed different characteristics to meet specific use cases. For example, Z-Wave was developed as a short-range wireless protocol that prioritized low energy consumption and mesh-type architecture. The protocol also supports higher data rates to enable control commands to be sent and executed quickly. On the other hand, LoRa was built to support low-energy consumption use cases across long-range connectivity. In terms of deployment architecture, a star-type topology was mainly used.

However, with the release of Z-Wave Long Range (ZWLR), the protocol can now reach ranges of over 2 Kilometers (km) in star-type network topologies, thereby enabling new use cases and applications beyond the traditional smart home. This trend is also being modeled across other traditional smart home protocols, with the latest Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi specifications released in November 2025 also adding long-range sub-Gigahertz (GHz) mesh networking capabilities to the Zigbee protocol. Other sub-GHz IoT connectivity protocols also include Wi-Fi HaLow, Wi-SUN, and Amazon Sidewalk.

It is important to note that there are still differences, and each protocol is built to address specific use cases. However, the gap is narrowing.

The key question to address here is whether the narrowing gap is good or bad for the market. At ABI Research, we see this as hugely positive news for the wireless community.

Instead of seeing this as an “if this, then not this” scenario, we are of the view that these different connectivity protocols are synergistic in nature, and when combined on a single hardware platform, could accelerate the growth of the entire industry. This can be achieved in several ways:

• A single hardware platform supporting multiple connectivity protocols increases choice and device flexibility for end users. For example, an industrial end user may now choose to deploy LoRa-based sensors and Z-Wave-enabled security systems over a single network.
• Unlocking new use cases increases the perceived value of traditional LoRa-based wireless networks, which, in turn, can lead to higher rates of adoption.
• With the right partnerships and synergies, each connectivity protocol can focus on building up their respective strengths and target markets, instead of developing an “all-in-one” solution.

In conclusion, the announcement by Z-Wave and Semtech is a step in the right direction. Semtech is also looking to add support for Zigbee and Thread (Matter) in the future, so ABI Research believes that this is a good opportunity for traditional smart home communication protocols to expand their scope and reach beyond the home.