Up to 18% of remote controls shipped by 2018 will feature wireless radio frequency (RF) technology IMS Research reports, allowing for a range of functionality not enabled by current IR technology.

According to the analyst RF remote shipments for the 2013-2018 period should total 450 million units.

RF technology allows for a number of features, such as non-line-of-sight, voice, gesture, touch and motion-- key for device makers wanting to make  richer control environments in Smart TVs and the like.

“With Smart TVs finding their way into more and more homes, advances are taking place in how consumers control these devices," IMS says. "And increasingly, RF technology is being integrated into the remote controls of consumer electronic devices to enable a range of advanced functions.”

RF-based remotes also tend to carry other low-power wireless technologies (Bluetooth Smart, ZigBee RF4CE and low-power wifi) already in use in an amount of TVs, DVD/Blu-ray players and STBs.

“When the host device is already equipped with a low-power wireless technology, it can make sense to produce a control that takes advantage of the same technology as only one additional integrated circuit is required for the control,” IMS continues.

However, while RF is arguably superior the market will prefer to go for what it knows best-- consumers are more than familiar with IR technology, while OEMs find IR-based remotes cheaper to make.

Go Low-Power Wireless Projected to Make Waves in Remote Controls (IMS Research)