ZigBee is to compete with Bluetooth,
NFC and
Wibree technologies in the future, following a move by the ZigBee Alliance to push the technology into the telecoms market.
The industry organisation has produced
a telecoms profile for the technology which will allow it to be included in mobile phones. Possible applications would be secure mobile payment, information delivery, health care monitoring, peer-to-peer small file sharing and location-based services.
“ZigBee lends itself to supporting larger networks where long battery life is required,” said Tony Lucido, v-p marketing at Jennic. “As the number of devices or appliances monitored grows I think this will be a natural
progression to have that functionality in a mobile phone.”
The ZigBee-enabled devices will either have the technology embedded or use a ZigBee SIM card and act as a mobile terminal or a sensor control device wherever there is a ZigBee network or access point.