Interest in UWB Wireless Technology is Surging in EMEA and APAC – What’s Driving the Demand?

SPARK Microsystems has been making headlines again in recent weeks, and we appreciate the positive response from our customers, fans and followers!

From our headquarters in North America, we announced a new sales and support network for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) markets, comprised of both local European SPARK Microsystems sales and technical support resources, as well as manufacturers’ representatives in each region. And we announced two distributor partnerships in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. SPARK Microsystems will be represented by Skysoon in China and Edom in Taiwan, Greater China, India, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia.

Why here and why now? SPARK Microsystems is committed to ensuring a strong sales and support presence for our customers in every high-value market. But interest in UWB wireless technology is surging in these two regions in particular, and it’s easy to see why: they’re the gateways to massive commercial markets where UWB’s potential can be unleashed at massive scale.

TITANS OF INDUSTRY

While we can’t disclose the details of our customer engagements just yet, our conversations with them tend to revolve around topics of particular interest to the cluster of powerhouse technology vendors residing in their backyards.

EMEA is of course home to many of the world’s biggest industrial and automotive suppliers, where the respective UWB opportunities in IoT/IIoT sensors and keyless vehicle entry loom large. Real-time locating systems (RTLS) remain a major area of focus for UWB enablement in EMEA, and likewise, UWB is striking a chord among audio engineers in the region targeting wireless earphones, speakers, ‘surround sound’ technologies and other apps where premium sound is a major selling point.

And if you ever want to see an industrial designer really get excited, there’s an industry conversation happening right now about how ultra-low-power UWB opens the door to wireless, battery-less sensors powered by nothing more than ambient indoor light, or even vibration or body heat. UWB is truly revolutionary technology, and its ripple effect for advanced sensor technologies will likewise be game-changing.

XR: THE FUTURE OF CONSUMER ELECTRONICS

In the APAC region, SPARK Microsystems has arrived at a pivotal moment in the hotly competitive consumer electronics market, where major innovation in gaming, audio, and positioning technology is converging for next-generation AR/VR/MR technology – and onward to XR applications in the metaverse of tomorrow. UWB is a key enabling technology for these apps, delivering high-speed data throughput that Bluetooth can’t, with orders of magnitude lower latency and power consumption for ultra-responsive devices built for extended usage between battery charges.

Bluetooth has served us well enough for consumer electronics devices and personal area network (PAN) apps during its decades-long dominion, but Bluetooth wasn’t conceived with XR applications in mind. It allowed us to ‘cut the cord’ for the first time, for which we’re thankful, but it cost us dearly in audio/multimedia quality. With UWB, our short-range comms can finally be delivered at high speed, uncompressed – with no wires needed – and this is essential to XR’s future.

How big is the XR opportunity in Asia? According to some experts, the Asia Pacific XR market will grow by 49% over 2020-2026 with a total addressable market cap of $288.2 billion within the APAC region alone.

We’ll keep you well apprised of SPARK Microsystems’ strategic initiatives in EMEA, APAC and elsewhere in the months ahead as UWB innovation and adoption continues to accelerate around the globe. Anywhere PANs can be supercharged and/or IoT sensors could run on almost no charge at all, SPARK UWB can help make it happen.

For more information on our global distributors & sales representatives network, feel free to visit our Contact Us page

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