SAN JOSE, California, United States-While much has been promised for the short-range wireless technology Bluetooth, the delivery has been less than sparkling with delays to the specification, higher-than-anticipated chipset costs and interoperability problems. Regardless of these barriers, silicon developers maintain that Bluetooth is now set for the big time and will record 300-percent growth in chipset shipments in 2003.
While most big players in the Bluetooth chipset market are bullish, leading the optimism is California-based Silicon Wave and Sweden’s Ericsson Technology Licensing, which both believe around 100 million units could ship by the end of 2003, up from around 30 million for 2002. Other silicon developers are more cautious, but even they are confident of the market seeing more than 60 million Bluetooth chips delivered next year, the bulk of which will go to cell-phone manufacturers.
This comes as the market research firm IC Insights claimed in its latest study the total communications systems chipset market is forecast to decline 14 percent this year compared with 2001. The firms maintained the cellular handset integrated circuit (IC) market will represent 67 percent of the total wireless IC market in 2002.
