As one of the industrial automation majors, ABB is clearly making strong commitments to wireless. Perhaps the lack of big ABB announcements over "wireless initiatives" is because the company is spread over many different industrial markets, not just process controls (like Emerson and Honeywell).

In a 2006 wireless briefing on "Wireless and Mobility" provided to selected industry analysts, ABB shows the significant breadth and scope of its wireless offerings. There are lots of wireless products for extreme locations, for quickly instrumenting temporary situations, global location and status tracking.

ABB serves much broader markets than other automation leaders. Their two main business segments are Automation and Power. Over the past couple of years many different wireless products have been introduced - for water and electricity meters, power equipment and switchgear monitoring, machine monitoring, wireless monitoring in the oil & gas industry, power and fuel meters, mobile power-line & cable inspection, power breakers.

For process control environments, ABB offers wireless process transmitters and fieldbus distributed I/O, plus wireless upgrades for 4-20mA HART installations and wireless HMI - all with interface to PCs and wireless PDAs (tools in the field-engineer's pocket).

While others are doing a big song-and-dance, ABB is busy expanding its industrial wireless offerings.