UPPER SADDLE RIVER, N.J. -- Illustrating its leadership position in the wireless home control market, the Z-Wave Alliance announced today the overwhelming success of the inaugural Z-Wave Alliance Open House in Copenhagen, Denmark on June 14. More than 120 companies from 20 countries attended the filled-to-capacity event. With over 85% of attendees from residential product manufacturers, the Z-Wave Alliance continues to be recognized by the home control market as the established standard for consumers, homebuilders and home remodelers.
The keynote presentation, given by Sten Johansen, Intel's Consumer Manager Nordic, focused on Intel's vision of the Digital Home and explained how wireless home control applications play a vital role in it. There were additional presentations by industry leaders including Intermatic, Leviton, Universal Electronics, Wayne Dalton, iCOM and Danfoss. The companies presented their view of the rapidly growing market for home controls, highlighted the reasons for selecting Z-Wave as their technology of choice and reaffirmed their strong commitment to the Z-Wave Alliance.
Manufacturers of consumer products from both Europe and the U.S. displayed and demonstrated Z-Wave enabled products including indoor/outdoor lighting, thermostat control, garage door and access control, appliance control, integration with home entertainment systems or Microsoft Windows Media Center, universal remote controls, PDA and PC based control interfaces and even Z-Wave enabled residential gateways with built-in support for DSL and Wireless LAN.
"The wide range of Z-Wave enabled products exhibited here clearly demonstrates the Z-Wave Alliance's growing acceptance as the standard in the wireless home control market," commented Yan Rodriguez, Director Home Networking, Wayne Dalton. Rodriguez added, "with Panasonic's display of their new Z-Wave modules, with Ivistar showing a high power Z-Wave module, and with Zykronix offering Z-Wave enabled wall panels to OEMs, an open market for Z-Wave components becomes evident".
Mike Einstein, Vice President of Intermatic, Inc. and spokesperson for the Z-Wave Alliance, said, "The strong interest by OEM's at this inaugural event, the significant growth by the number of home control manufacturer's participating in the Z-Wave Alliance and the availability of Z-Wave enabled products through Fry's high-volume retail channel clearly shows the monumental progress since establishing Z-Wave as the de-facto standard for the wireless home control market."
The Z-Wave Alliance also announced the launch of the new web site for homeowners and homebuilders. Presentations from the Z-Wave Alliance event will be posted to www.Z-WaveAlliance.com for manufacturers interested in learning more about the Alliance and the technical perspective from current members.
