OXFORD, United Kingdom-The principal supporters of the Bluetooth short-range wireless technology used the U.S.-based Comdex exhibition late last year to take the message of its capabilities to a much wider and more diverse audience. But despite this first public display of the technology, many within the consumer electronics industry remained unconvinced of its likely success because of the prevarication of one company, Microsoft, concerning its commitment to support Bluetooth.
However, this concern has now been cleared away in one sweep with the five founding members of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (BSIG)-Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba-announcing that Microsoft, 3Com, Lucent and Motorola will join them to form the Bluetooth Promoter group. This heavyweight group is said to have access to an undisclosed amount of financial backing to assist with the development and promotion of Bluetooth.
This significant endorsement can only lead to more companies now agreeing to join the 1,200 that already have pledged their support for Bluetooth.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has yet to explain why, after months of public indecision, it agreed to join the BSIG. Perhaps the embarrassment of attending this December’s largest-ever Bluetooth developers’ conference without being able to give a clear statement caused the move, or maybe there was some hard truth in the rumor it was coming under increasing pressure from its original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers and partners, such as Intel and Compaq.
Anders Edlund, Ericsson’s Bluetooth marketing director, gave some support to Microsoft, saying the company had stated in public it would support the technology, but had failed to detail how.
“Everyone was surprised they had not joined. I could not see how they can hold out. They must have listened to their customers,” Edlund added.
Early demand
Regardless of this most recent announcement, strong signs show the interest in Bluetooth is outstripping initial delivery capacity. Designers of the special Bluetooth developer’s kit say they have been unable to meet demand, with more than 300 kits shipped to date-with, interestingly, more than 75 percent of these going to companies not previously associated with wireless technology. The kit developers, who confessed they never expected this level of early demand, claimed late last year they were resolving the shortage of these US$15,000 kits, but claimed strict confidentiality when asked to name those companies that had ordered them.
Supporting this early evidence of market demand is a recent study by market-research firm Cahners In-Stat, which predicts that the manufacture of Bluetooth-enabled equipment could easily exceed 200 million units in 2003.
“The first wave of Bluetooth markets will primarily take off in high-end cellular handsets and notebook PCs that are geared toward the corporate market or business user,” said Joyce Putscher, a director at Cahners In-Stat.
The second Bluetooth wave, said the company, will engulf lower-cost mobile phones and portable devices, digital cameras, printers, automotive, home networking and a variety of vertical markets, resulting in a sharp rise in unit volume.
However, this forecast of 200 million Bluetooth-enabled devices, when compared with other industry forecasts, might be on the low side. Many in the industry are quietly confident the number of units could be around 600 million, while others put the number as high as 800 million.
Regardless of the number, signs that a race to be among the first to market with Bluetooth are developing between the major cell phone manufacturers-principally Ericsson, Nokia and Motorola-and laptop PC manufacturers IBM and Toshiba.
Bad news for DECT
The adoption of Bluetooth at anything near these anticipated levels will not be without pain for competing short-range wireless technologies. Chief among these is DECT, a worthy, but expensive technology that spent too long being “standardized” and has seen only limited success in a small number of regions.
Ericsson’s Edlund admits that Bluetooth-enabled handsets could cause significant problems for the medium-term future of DECT. “If the market decides that everything in the home will eventually go with Bluetooth, including the cell phone, then DECT will have a very hard time surviving.”
He pointed to the 1,200 companies in the BSIG being a very powerful factor in the potential success of Bluetooth and said it will be between two and five years before DECT is overwhelmed by market forces.
Edlund added the HomeRF initiative to this list, saying this PC-centric technology lacks the broad backing and financial muscle behind Bluetooth and likely will be sidelined into serving a market niche strictly limited to the PC arena.
He also believes Bluetooth will severely restrict the success of infrared and wireless local area network technology, such as HiperLAN and other 802.11-based technologies looking to offer similar functionality to Bluetooth.
This triumph for Bluetooth will come about due to the low cost of the hardware, now predicted to fall below US$5 if forecast volumes are achieved; the determination that the technology will be independent of air interface, hardware platform and operating system; and the real likelihood that the transmission speed and range are set to be increased.
