There's always talk of politicians or pundits contradicting themselves. But what most people don't know is that companies do this all the time.

Take the case of Philips, and the technology called Zigbee.

Zigbee is a standard for low bit-rate, very low-power transmissions that could happen in the 802.11 frequency space. Such "sensor networks" would be a key component in the World of Always-On. (The illustration of the Zigbee Alliance logo is from Figure8Wireless, a Zigbee proponent.)

Philips is an original member of the Zigbee Alliance, which gets together in Seattle later this month.

What's their stand? Turns out it depends on who you talk to.

In the April 18 Business Week, Chief Executive Gerard J. Kleisterlee is very upbeat.

The company's latest push is wireless. The goal is to enable products to communicate over the air via technologies such as Wi-Fi. To make it fly, the company has to collaborate with rivals on standards. That's why Philips is backing joint efforts such as the creation of an ultralow-power radio technology called ZigBee, which can connect coffeemakers, security systems, and even lightbulbs. "It's better to team up than to fight," says Kleisterlee.

But now turn to the April 30 issue of CommsDesign, part of EETimes, and their take on the coming Zigbee Alliance confab. Junko Yoshida talked to Paul Marino, vice president and general manager of business line connectivity.

Though an early and aggressive promoter of the spec, Philips "is not ready to make a statement" about when it will enter the Zigbee chip market, Paul Marino, vice president and general manager of business line connectivity, said in an interview.

Indeed, the perception that Philips had three years ago of Zigbee's target market is "no longer valid," Marino said. Philips remains a member of the Zigbee Alliance, but Philips Lighting replaced Philips Semiconductors on the board about a month ago.

While work on the Zigbee spec has moved forward faster than for some alternatives, silicon for the myriad envisioned applications hasn't been forthcoming. In- deed, thus far Zigbee's influence has been largely limited to industrial automation.

Sounds like Kleisterlee zigged when he should have zagged, doesn't it?

In fact, the current version of Zigbee would make you replace chips every three months, and that's just not good enough for many Always-On applications. The group is looking at UWB radios, and trying to extend the life of Zigbee chips to something more reasonable, before trying to go beyond the technology's roots in industrial automation.

I guess it just didn't get up the chain of command.