The year saw Ember achieve record shipments of its ZigBee semiconductors, shipping more chips in 2007 than all the previous years combined. This ramp-up stems largely from the many new commercial ZigBee-based advanced metering infrastructure and home automation, monitoring and security products its customers introduced in the past year.

According to a paper by The Brattle Group (“The Power of Five Percent,” May 2007), best available technologies, like ZigBee, can help reduce peak electricity demand by at least five percent over the next few years. The paper goes on to say that this reduction could save consumers more than $3 billion in annual electricity costs, and help reduce the $50-$100 billion in losses that businesses suffer each year due to power outages and brownouts. “Ember made a big push into AMI and energy conservation in 2007 because of the huge potential that ZigBee offers this market in reduced energy consumption and cost,” said Ember CEO, Bob LeFort. “With partners who are leaders in smart metering technologies, Ember expects to be the dominant supplier of ZigBee wireless technology to the AMI industry by the end of 2008.”