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I like to share this good News with all of you.
I hope this will give zwave a big boost.


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There is now a second source available for the Z-Wave chip- Mitsumi from Japan.

While this sounds like a normal move this has significantly impact on the market place.

One of the biggest roadblocks for Z-Wave was its proprietary nature. Large corporations typically don’t want to be locked in by one single vendor. With a second chip provider on board Z-Wave now gets into an excellent position to gain further market share and become the established player. Particularly in Japan this means a huge push, taking into account that Zigbee can not be used in Japan in energy metering and control due to regulatory reasons and the fact, that Japanese companies like to buy from Japanese companies.
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It's not clear to me how this could change the propietary nature of Zwave. More devices will be available for the japanse market, but that's about it no ? Or am I too pessimistic

Soitjes.

It won't change the propietary nature of Zwave BUT you can now get it from different sources meaning that you are not tied into just a single company.

Say you make an investment into a new Zwave product and want to sell it at a certain price level to make it worthwhile.
Now if the major component of your product doubles in price you will never be able to regain your costs. With two or preferably more companies selling the major component that will be less of a problem as you can skip to another source.

Besides that it will also generate a general awareness of Zwave in the market.
Hopefully for us consumers the prices of the gadgets will drop...
And imagine that all japanese amplifiers/flatscreens and such would have a zwave chip build in!

Do you have any information about the cost of Z-wave Development Kit?
Will it be the same as when Zensy was the only vendor or cheaper?

I wrote to Mitsumi, but nothing in answer.

Thanks