So when Sigma Designs owned Z-Wave, and the Z-Wave business was about 85% of Sigma Design's revenue, it was an OK business for Sigma Designs, but never one that was that profitable, so obviously Sigma Designs thought this was a good time to sell. Silicon Labs is not a company that wants to acquire Sigma Designs just to keep running it like Sigma Designs ran it. That just wouldn't make sense. So what does Silicon Labs plan to do? The company is big on the IoT and already is a big supporter of Zigbee. But Zigbee being an open IEEE standard can be developed by many companies. Sigma Designs owns the Z-Wave standard and can license its use.
So Silicon Labs is "saying" they will add the Z-Wave protocol to their repertoire, and possibly make devices that support combo Z-Wave and Zigbee. This could entirely be true, and maybe Silicon Labs sees a way to increase the market Sigma Designs had to grow the market. That might even be "plan A" but if that doesn't go well, I believe there is a "plan B" which could be their plan all along, maybe. And plan B would be to use their position with Z-Wave to migrate users to Zigbee.
So how? Maybe they could support the market with Z-Wave/Zigbee combo devices, then 5 years down the line just say they are going to phase-out Z-Wave and then they have a big chunk of the market. Like I say, this may not be their initial main plan, but I'm sure its one of their backups.
I'm not a fortune teller, but if I was going to invest a bunch in Z-Wave this next year or two, maybe it would be best to wait for the combo Zigbee/Z-Wave devices to come out. The good news then is your not tied to either. I also think it will be quite easy for Silicon Labs to make these dual chips. We'll see.
