At the recent electronica India event, Vaishali Umredkar, Editor of Semiconductor For You interacted with Sam Low, Sales Director at Silicon Labs, to discuss the company’s focus areas, wireless innovations, smart metering growth in India, and the future of Matter-enabled home automation technologies.
Vaishali: Silicon Labs has been a known name in the semiconductor industry for years. Could you share the company’s current innovation focus and long-term vision?
Sam Low: At Silicon Labs, our primary focus areas include home automation, industrial wireless connectivity, and smart metering. In India especially, smart metering has become a major success area for us over the last few years. Alongside this, we are investing heavily in AI and machine learning capabilities for next-generation wireless applications.
Another exciting area is channel sounding technology for the automotive sector. We are already working with some Tier-1 automotive companies in India on advanced applications such as secure car door unlocking using high-accuracy distance measurement technology. This will become more visible in the coming years.
We are also expanding aggressively into Wi-Fi technologies. Towards the end of this year and into 2027, Silicon Labs will introduce several new Gen 3-based Wi-Fi and home automation chipsets.
Vaishali: Wireless connectivity is rapidly evolving across industries. How does Silicon Labs see this transformation, particularly in home automation?
Sam Low: Traditionally, home automation relied heavily on technologies such as Zigbee and Z-Wave. However, the ecosystem is now shifting toward Matter and Matter-over-Wi-Fi solutions. Over the last two to three years, this transition has gained strong momentum.
From this year onward, consumers will start seeing a much larger number of Matter-enabled smart devices entering the market. The developer ecosystem is now mature enough, and the industry is ready to accelerate adoption significantly.
Vaishali: What kind of opportunities and customers are you targeting in the Indian market?
Sam Low: India is still at a relatively early stage in home automation adoption, especially for Matter-over-Wi-Fi designs. Through industry events and ecosystem engagement, we are trying to encourage more local developers and product designers to enter this space.
Currently, a large portion of advanced wireless product design still comes from regions such as China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. In India, our strongest focus has been smart metering. In fact, I personally started working on promoting smart metering opportunities here back in 2009.
The journey had its challenges initially, but from around 2022 onwards, we started seeing strong commercial momentum. Today, the business is performing beyond our expectations and generating excellent growth.
Vaishali: How is Silicon Labs strengthening its presence and partnerships in India?
Sam Low: We have a strong software-focused office in Hyderabad with hundreds of engineers supporting various development activities. In addition, we have sales teams operating across northern, western, and southern India.
Our India teams are mainly focused on enabling opportunities across smart metering, automotive, industrial automation, and emerging smart home applications. Industrial business continues to remain an important segment for us as well.
Vaishali: Which application segments do you see driving the next phase of growth for Silicon Labs in India?
Sam Low: Smart metering, automotive wireless applications, industrial automation, and home automation will continue to be the key growth drivers for us in India. With wireless connectivity becoming increasingly intelligent and interoperable, we believe the Indian market is entering an exciting phase of transformation.