ZigBee is the next big thing to hit the market.  There are many companies that are utilizing the performance that the ZigBee technology holds, performance issues related to the frequency range and the low power battery usage.  These companies like Arcom, Chipcon, Freescale, CompX, and Ember have already invested millions of dollars into ZigBee chips.  Unfortunately, ZigBee, which has most of its chip applications in home usage, does not hit the market big until 2006.  As of right now, ZigBee could be said to be between the market and the lab.  A few products are out there, as are "ZigBee-ready" products, but development is still taking place.
Two companies on the cutting edge of the ZigBee market include Chipcon and Arcom.  Chipcon is using ZigBee to produce a road map product that reduces the chip and system costs and increases integration level with low power consumption.  Chipcon's ZigBee SoC’s will include an IEEE 802.15.4 compliant RE transceiver; a low power, yet high performance, microcontroller; flash program memory and RAM and a powerful peripheral module.  ROM based versions can be provided for very high volume applications.  Arcom has joined the ZigBee Alliance to produce ZigBee-ready radio products using Chipcon's industry leading CS2420 device for low power network applications.  Arcom has many years of experience producing network gateway devices which link legacy and proprietary devices to standard LAN, W-LAN, and cellular networks.  The list [19] below gives links to several other companies that are currently selling and developing ZigBee-based products.

Right now, ZigBee development kits run between $100-$300 dollars, depending on the size of the kit. Individual modules are less expensive, while the price of a ZigBee radio for a network node is estimated to be $6 to the manufacturer once full-scale production takes place.  Sensors are currently being used in environmental and agricultural applications, but the main target - home automation - has yet to be reached.  ZigBee technology is also being used and tested in applications related to health monitoring.
ZigBee is not alone in the world of home automation and sensor networks.  It faces competition from similar technologies such as Z-Wave, a technology based on the Zensys' Z-Wave open standard.  This standard focuses on the same areas as ZigBee and may actually control a bigger corner of the market.  However, it lacks a global standard and does not quite have the publicity that ZigBee currently holds.  Another existing automation technology is Insteon by Smarthome.  Insteon is very similar to ZigBee and Z-Wave technologies, except that it offers a dual band network, as opposed to the single band networks of the latter two technologies.  Like ZigBee, Insteon has development kits available, while large scale manufacturing is still on the not-to-distant horizon.  Other proprietary mesh protocols based on IEEE 802.15.4 ensure that ZigBee faces, and will continue to face, a competitive market in the world of low rate networking.