ZigBee establishes retail shopping standard

Already well-entrenched in the energy management, resident and consumer electronics industries, the ZigBee Alliance is turning its attention to the retail shopping market with its Zigbee Retail Services standard.

Focusing on the retail experience from point-of-manufacture to point-of-sale, Bob Heile, ZigBee Alliance chairman, said the new standard will define applications for mobile terminals with accompanying plug-in modules. In addition, the new standard will be able to collect in-store information from retail customers and create a wireless network for in-home shopping and retail help with support for voice-capable employee and customer devices in a diversity of retail settings.

ZigBee continues to make progress with industry verticals and the service provider community. Throughout 2009, the group not only established alliances with members of the smart energy, remote control and home automation market segments, but it also added AT&T to its member roster to see how it can leverage ZigBee standards to target the healthcare vertical. AT&T joins a well-established list of European service provider members, including Telecom Italia, France Telecom and Telefonica.

For more:
- Connected Planet has this article
- see the release here