AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands-The Bluetooth Special Interest Group reported that the Bluetooth industry is now shipping more than 2 million units per week worldwide, which is less than nine months after the Bluetooth SIG said the industry had passed the 1-million-units-per-week mark.
“Bluetooth wireless technology is definitely moving into the consumer mainstream with more than 150 million units shipped so far, and shipments now running at more than 2 million units per week,” said Stuart Carlaw, senior Bluetooth analyst at IMS Research.
In addition to the shipment mark, the Bluetooth SIG also reported the launch of a new Enhanced Data Rate prototype specification designed to provide up to three times faster data transmission than the current 721 kilobits per second available from the 1.2 version specification and a resulting drop in power consumption due to the decreased time needed to transmit information resulting from the higher speed. The Bluetooth SIG noted the EDR specification was backward compatible with the previous 1.1 and 1.2 version specifications for the wireless technology, and it expected EDR specifications to be completed later this year.
A number of Bluetooth chipset manufactures have already announced support for the EDR specification, including CSR, which launched its BlueCore4 product based on the EDR specification with mass production planned to begin during the fourth quarter of this year.
To further facilitate the deployment of Bluetooth-enabled products, the Bluetooth SIG said it has established a new policy for finalizing specifications requiring three interoperable prototypes to be demonstrated at test events before a new specification is adopted. The SIG noted the new policy would eliminate the risk for interoperability issues in early devices built on new versions of Bluetooth specifications.
