There seem to be some companies speading FUD about ZigBee chips. Like in standards, applications and file formats, people tend to choose as what is believed to be the “market leader“ or the company with the largest installed base.
Because of this companies tend to be very optimistic about availability of their chips. Trade Journals often simply do a rough rewite of a press release without any fact checking.
About a year ago the “markt leaders“ were OKI / CompXS, Freescale, ChipCon, Ember and Jennic. The Ember chip was a re-labeled ChipCon chip, Jennic had a lot of publicity but no intention of actually producing chips and the OKI chip was nowhere to be found. Freescale, ChipCon and CompXS were the only companies with actual chips actually available.
I've done a small reality check : Which ZigBee chips can you actually buy from a distributor ?
MC13191 3 Distributors, Available, In stock, $ 6,00
MC13192 3 Distributors, Available, In stock, $ 6,00
MC13193 3 Distributors, Available, In stock, $ 6,00
CC2420 2 Distributors, Available, In stock, $ 4,00
CC2430 1 Distributor, unknown, unknown, $7,00
CX1540 not available (CompXS no longer exists)
86RF201 not available
ML7065 not available
EM2420 not available
EM250 "pre order"
UZ2400 not available
JS24Z121 not available
JN5121 not available
ZMD44101 1 Distributor, unknown, unknown, unknown
posted on Tuesday, November 01, 2005 2:37 PM