Consumer and industrial IoT drive wireless chip market

The development of IoT devices for consumer and industrial markets continues to drive the need for next-generation wireless chips. At the same time, accelerating demand for Wi-Fi 6 and 7, Bluetooth 5.x/6 and Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), and edge AI applications are driving requirements for multi-protocol wireless system-on-chips (SoCs).

The wireless connectivity chipset market size is forecast to grow from $9.3 billion in 2025 to $10 billion in 2026 and reach $14.6 billion by 2031, at a 7.72% compound annual growth rate over 2026–2031, according to Mordor Intelligence. Growth is attributed to the rapid integration of multi-protocol functionality into single-chip solutions, the increasing demand for edge AI processing, and a surge in automotive telematics.

Here’s a sampling of several wireless chips introduced in 2026, targeting consumer and industrial IoT applications. They feature high integration, low power consumption, and advanced security features.

Low power consumption is a key requirement for battery-powered IoT devices. Silicon Labs recently developed its lowest-power Bluetooth LE wireless SoC that also enables more capabilities with higher integration. The Series 2 BG2B builds on existing Series 2 devices, including the BG22, BG24, and BG27, targeting applications such as secure ranging, asset tracking, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), smart homes, industrial monitoring, and vehicle diagnostics.

The Bluetooth 6 SoC addresses the need for higher power efficiency, security, and integration and leverages the company’s lowest-power Bluetooth architecture with a feature set for Bluetooth Channel Sounding, Secure Vault High security, and integrated peripherals including CAN-FD, LED drivers, and dual ADCs.

Silicon Labs said battery life is one of the biggest challenges for battery-powered IoT devices as products continue to add more sensing, intelligence, and wireless capabilities. Thanks to the BG2B device’s dual-output DC/DC power architecture and multi-core design, it can significantly improve efficiency across active, receive, and sleep modes, according to the company.

The BG2B is the lowest-power Bluetooth LE device in Silicon Labs’ portfolio. It delivers 14% to 15% lower microcontroller (MCU) active current, lower Bluetooth receive current, and 1.1-µA EM2 sleep current with RAM retention, compared with the previous lowest-power Bluetooth LE SoC. By enabling longer battery life, it is suited for products such as wireless sensors, asset tags, smart locks, remotes, wearables, and ESLs.

The wireless SoC supports advanced Bluetooth Channel Sounding capabilities, including Mode 3, Normalized Attack Detector Metric, and Inline Phase Correction Term for location-aware products. It meets Apple and Google Bluetooth Channel Sounding specifications, enabling interoperable products across leading mobile ecosystems, Silicon Labs said. The company’s Channel Sounding development solution includes a royalty-free ranging library, software, tools, and engineering support

The BG2B delivers even lower energy per ranging event through shorter Channel Sounding step timings, lower active current, and lower Bluetooth LE receive current, according to Silicon Labs.

The high integration of peripherals also helps reduce bill-of-materials cost and printed-circuit-board area. These peripherals include Bluetooth LE with integrated CAN-FD, enabling wireless diagnostics and monitoring for commercial vehicles, fleet management, industrial equipment, and maintenance applications without requiring a separate Bluetooth bridge device.

The BG2B also integrates an LED boost and four-channel LED sink capabilities, eliminating the need for external LED driver circuitry; dual 12-bit ADCs for simultaneous analog sampling; and variable resistive load for more accurate battery health estimation. It also packs expanded memory and a broad set of communication peripherals.

Security features include Silicon Labs’ Secure Vault technology to protect device identity, firmware, cryptographic keys, and sensitive data and support for PSA Level 3 compliance, helping manufacturers meet evolving security requirements such as the European Union Cyber Resilience Act. Developers can also securely provision devices with unique identities, certificates, and cryptographic credentials during manufacturing under the company’s Custom Part Manufacturing Service.

The BG2B wireless SoCs are housed in QFN40 5 × 5 × 0.85-mm, 0.4-mm-pitch and QFN48 6 × 6 × 0.85-mm, 0.4-mm-pitch packages. Initial production hardware, including modules, is planned for 2027.

There has also been a rapid rise in the need for multi-protocol functionality, along with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth LE, which many wireless chip makers have focused on delivering to the IoT industry.

Earlier this year, for example, Synaptics Inc. introduced the SYN765x, an AI-native Wi-Fi 7 wireless MCU for IoT edge applications, targeting smart appliances, home automation systems, and industrial IoT applications. (In June 2026, onsemi announced it will acquire Synaptics in a $7 billion deal.)

The high-performance wireless connectivity chip delivers single-chip integration that reduces system space requirements and simplifies design. It integrates Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth LE 6.0, and Thread/Zigbee across 2.4-, 5-, and 6-GHz bands. The SYN765x features dedicated on-chip acceleration that supports predefined AI-native control and signal-processing functions, which reduces the host processor load and meets strict latency and power requirements.

Synaptics said power and cost constraints have limited adoption of the latest Wi-Fi standards in embedded systems, and by offering Wi-Fi 7 capabilities for low-power designs, the SYN765x helps enable lower latency, seamless band switching, secure reconnections, and access to the 6-GHz spectrum.

The SYN765x enables advanced wireless sensing, including presence detection, motion tracking, and proximity awareness using standard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals. The chip leverages high-accuracy Channel State Information extraction with on-device machine learning for Wi-Fi sensing.

The wireless chip features Bluetooth Channel Sounding for accurate, power-efficient distance measurements under typical operating conditions. This is an alternative to more expensive technologies, such as mmWave radar or ultra-wideband, Synaptics said. It also integrates logic, DSP, and NPU resources to provide a high-performance platform for embedded edge AI workloads.

Synaptics offers several deployment models for the SYN765x: It can operate as a co-processor alongside a host application processor or MCU, or function in standalone and host-less configurations thanks to its on-chip memory and processing resources. By eliminating a separate MCU in many designs, the SYN765x significantly reduces system complexity and cost in battery-powered IoT devices, Synaptics said.

The triple-combo device offers concurrent operation of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Thread. Other features include an integrated low-noise amplifier, power amplifier, and transmit/receive switches. Peripheral support includes UART, SPI, SDIO, I²C, I²S, USB, GPIO, ADC, DAC, and PDM. The device is housed in a QFN package (<100 mm²). Production for the SYN765x solution is expected in Q4 2026. Development kits are available.

Espressif Systems recently announced that its ESP32-S31 dual-core RISC-V SoC with extensive wireless connectivity has entered mass production. Designed for next-generation AIoT applications, the wireless SoC targets smart home hubs, smart speakers, edge AI devices, and industrial automation applications.

First announced in March 2026, the ESP32-S31 integrates Wi-Fi 6 (2.4 GHz), Bluetooth 5.4 (including LE Audio and Classic BR/EDR), IEEE 802.15.4 (Zigbee and Thread), and a Gigabit Ethernet MAC. It also supports Matter over Wi-Fi and Thread.

The ESP32-S31 features a dual-core, 32-bit RISC-V CPU running at up to 320 MHz, with one core supporting a 128-bit data path and SIMD instruction set for accelerated computing performance. The chip also integrates a 40-MHz low-power co-processor, 512 KB of on-chip SRAM, support for high-speed, 250-MHz DDR PSRAM expansion, and up to 60 GPIOs.

For HMI applications, the wireless chip offers interfaces for DVP cameras, multiple LCD display types, and up to 14 capacitive-touch channels. It also includes dedicated hardware accelerators (including a JPEG encoder/decoder and a 2D graphics accelerator) to help improve multimedia performance, while dual I²S controllers enable hardware-level Bluetooth audio synchronization.

Security features include secure key management using RAM-based physically unclonable functions, secure boot, flash and PSRAM encryption, digital signature peripheral, cryptographic hardware acceleration, and protection against side-channel attacks and power-glitch manipulation. A Trusted Execution Environment with Access Permission Management enables software isolation for secure, multi-application deployment, the company said.

Development tools include Espressif’s ESP-IDF development framework. The wireless chip is compatible with Espressif’s software ecosystem, including ESP-Matter, ESP-GMF, ESP-BLE-MESH, and ESP-BLE-AUDIO. It can also be deployed as a connectivity co-processor through ESP-Hosted and ESP-AT. It is available from the Espressif Official AliExpress Store.

If you’re looking for robust, entry-level wireless chips for consumer applications, Nordic Semiconductor recently expanded its nRF54L series with a multi-protocol SoC for size- and cost-effective IoT devices. The nRF54LC10A supports Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth Channel Sounding, Thread, Zigbee, and Matter.

This ultra-low-power wireless SoC targets Bluetooth LE devices and smart home applications, including tags, asset trackers, and smart home sensors. It delivers enhanced energy efficiency and advanced security features.

Nordic said the nRF54LC10A meets size and cost targets for cost-sensitive, connected devices without sacrificing protocols, security features, or a comprehensive software ecosystem.

The entry-level nRF54LC10A is the smallest ultra-low-power multi-protocol SoC in the nRF54L Series. It combines a simple MCU (128-MHz Arm Cortex-M33 core supported by a RISC-V co-processor) with a multi-protocol radio in a 1.9 × 2.3-mm chip-scale package (CSP). Key specs include 1 MB of nonvolatile memory, 192 KB of RAM, and peripherals (SPI/TWI/UART interfaces and an ADC) for simple connected products.

The nRF54LC10A is built on a 22-nm process node with Nordic’s low-leakage RAM and multi-protocol radio design. The radio draws 4.0 mA in receive and 5.8 mA in transmit at 0 dBm, with a maximum TX power of +4 dBm. Sensitivities are –97 dBm for Bluetooth LE 1M and –101 dBm for 802.15.4. Sleep-mode current ranges from 0.5 µA to 1.6 µA.

The advanced security features include the Arm TrustZone isolation and protection against physical attacks, combined with support for FOTA and remote observability in Nordic’s nRF Cloud services, which enables developers to meet regulatory requirements and keep products secure and maintainable in the field.

Because every nRF54L Series device runs the same qualified wireless stacks, embedded software, and tools, developers will be able to scale and upgrade their designs as requirements change.

The nRF54LC10A is available in three package options: two 1.9 × 2.3-mm CSPs and a QFN. It is now available for sampling, with production expected by Q2 2027. Development kits will be generally available by Q1 2027.

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