“A decade ago, WiFi and Bluetooth battled but ended up sharing the home networking space and successfully growing the market to where both technologies are now found everywhere,” explains Cees Links, CEO, GreenPeak Technologies. “The battle is brewing again as Bluetooth Mesh is now attempting to move from the sensor wearable space into the ultra-low power sensor networking space, today successfully served by ZigBee. However, it will take a lot of work to evolve Bluetooth Mesh to the position where it can provide the functions and capabilities that ZigBee already provides today. So why confuse and divide the market?”
We expect the industry to respond the same way as it did in the previous decade – realising that Bluetooth is the perfect solution for peripheral devices and wearables, whereas ZigBee is the optimal networking solution for connecting the hundreds of sentrollers (sensors, controllers and actuators) that will be functioning in our homes within the next few years.