Developer beats others to market
with Bluetooth headset
By Patrick Mannion
EE Times
(10/03/00, 7:34 p.m. EST)
MANHASSET, N.Y. — A Nashua, N.H., company
has beat the glamour players to the punch in delivering
the first commercially available, fully qualified Bluetooth
product, the GN 9000 Digital headset. Its developer,
GN Netcom, has the distinction of preceding to market
even Bluetooth founding member Ericsson, which is still
mired in the qualification process.
The headset, which uses a chip set from Digianswer
(Nibe, Denmark), was launched at the PCIA
GlobalXChange Conference and Exposition held in
Chicago late last month. Other hardware offerings
abounded, including a fountain of
Springboard-compatible modules for Handspring's Visor
PDA. But wireless Internet services, in the form of
applications management, delivery and synchronization, stole the show.
Scheduled to start shipping in November, the GN 9000 will sell for $299. The
basestation connection to the phone line is being offered at $499. The
company began taking orders for the device last week.
'A bit steep'
"While the price may seem a bit steep initially," said Greg Miller, product
marketing manager at GN Netcom, "we expect it to fall quickly as other
Bluetooth devices start hitting the market this fall and winter and we start
leveraging off the economies of scale." According to Miller, GN Netcom is
paying "between $15 and $25" for the Digianswer chip set, around which the
company adds its advanced amplifier and noise-cancellation technology,
developed over six years in the wireless-headset business.
Though the headset's range of 10 meters conforms to the Bluetooth
specification, reception and transmission quality quickly deteriorate in
non-line-of-sight conditions — for example, when a booth wall on the show
floor stood between the headset and the basestation. Martin Bodley, the
company's product manager for new technology, attributed this to a
combination of being at the limits of the specified range and the metal content
of the wall.
Other Bluetooth entries on display in Chicago included a point-to-point
demonstration of two Bluetooth-enabled laptops by Widcomm Inc. (San
Diego), shown in a gaming application. Based on a Texas Instruments Inc.
chip set, the solution was fully packaged in a finished product. Pricing and
availability were unavailable.
On the software side, Extended Systems (Boise, Idaho) announced that it has
ported its certified Bluetooth software stack to Wind River Systems'
VxWorks real-time operating system, while also offering a Bluetooth solution
for the Windows platform.
"The XTNDAccess Blue SDK [software development kit] for VxWorks
allows us to penetrate the embedded marketplace and help get developers up
and running quickly with our completely certified stack," said Donald
Baumgartner, mobile division manager at Extended Systems. Pointing to a
contract the company has with Palm, he said other potential applications
include cellular phones, digital cameras, medical equipment and industrial
automation products.
At the same time, Baumgartner said, "The XTNDConnect Blue SDK for
Windows forms a bridge to future Microsoft support through an added layer
that makes the Bluetooth programming transparent to Windows developers."
Out-of-the-box applications help retrofit existing PCs with Bluetooth
technology.
Besides being qualified, Extended's solution also passed all three levels of
testing during the August Bluetooth "unplugfest." The levels were the physical,
L2CAP/RFCOMM and the profiles, the latter including general access, serial
port, object push, dial-up networking, LAN access, fax and intercom, among
others.
However, for anyone evaluating or developing a Bluetooth solution,
Baumgartner suggested that particular attention be paid to the
object-exchange (OBEX) layer, since this has been shown to house the
remaining interoperability difficulties. Key aspects to inquire about include file
pushing, size limitations in file transfer, and synchronization, he said.
Handheld computers
In handheld computers, meanwhile, both Palm (Santa Clara, Calif.) and
Handspring (Mountain View, Calif.) talked up their wealth of developers at
the show, with Handspring particularly vocal. The company announced both a
CDMA wireless module and a cordless telephone module for its Springboard
Visor connection.
For its part, Palm said Speechworks (Cambridge, Mass.) has brought its
AnyDay Web-based calendar to the Palm platform. AnyDay allows users to
retrieve their calendar and contact information from any phone using spoken
commands.
The Handspring announcements were part of a showcase of developers'
options for the Springboard module interface. Modules demonstrated ranged
from mobile and cordless phones to modems and pagers. "While Jeff Hawkins
[chairman and founder of Handspring] may well have hit the nail on the head
with Springboard, the multiplicity of modules for each application makes for
an awkward implementation in the long run," said Craig Mathias, principal at
the Farpoint Group (Ashland, Mass.).
Among the Springboard entries, AirPrime Inc. (Santa Clara) debuted its
SB1000 CDMA-based wireless access module and Arkon Networks Inc.
(Vancouver, British Columbia) launched its Parafone Cordless Telephone
Springboard module.
Handspring also announced a product of its own, the VisorPhone, a module
that slots into the Visor to allow it to make and receive phone calls. Scheduled
to be available by year's end at $299, the VisorPhone "leverages the robust
PIM functionality and larger screen of the Visor to make things like speed
dialing, caller ID and conference calling more accessible to the average user,"
said Ed Colligan, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Handspring.
Handspring gets its wireless service from OmniSky Corp. Thanks to a deal
struck last June, users will be able to plug an OmniSky wireless modem into
their Visor and access the Internet using the cellular digital packet data
(CDPD) network.
As users get wireless Web access enabled through such services, managing,
using and delivering the multitude of services and options required while
reducing subscriber churn becomes a full-time job for carriers. As a result, the
Internet has become fertile terrain for companies that can smooth the
carrier-subscriber interface.
Many such companies were present at the conference. One, Postini
(Redwood City, Calif.), which specializes in value-added e-mail applications
over its patent-pending Email Pre-Processing Infrastructure, used PCIA as a
coming-out party of sorts. Founded in the summer of 1999, Postini first
launched the Postini Junk Email Assistant and the Postini Virus Assistant, both
currently available to e-mail service providers.
Service providers and carriers are "struggling to keep up with subscribers'
requirements for greater flexibility, more services and more control over their
e-mail delivery options," said company founder Scott Petry. "They just can't
keep pace and still focus on their core competencies. That's where we come
in."
Postini used PCIA to announce AirPostini, which allows e-mail service
providers to seamlessly integrate subscribers' e-mail services with their existing
wireless devices. Users can selectively receive e-mail on one or more of their
text-enabled wireless appliances via an online configuration site.
AirPostini can easily be added to the Pre-Processing Infrastructure, which
Petry described as "a scalable platform to which applications can be added as
user demands increase, thereby offloading application development from the
provider and allowing it to quickly meet requirements and reduce churn."
The infrastructure resides in-line with the flow of standard SMTP traffic. No
modification of providers' servers is required. A Message Platform hosts
applications devised by both Postini and third-party developers and is said to
allow users to better manage their e-mail.
When AirPostini detects a message that the user wants delivered to one or
multiple devices, it makes a copy of the message, formats it for the
appropriate device (specified by the user) and then delivers it to the user's
wireless carrier gateway. Numerous parameters can be used to route the
delivery, including file size and sender.
To meet security and privacy concerns, the Postini platform doesn't request
messages from the provider's server until the user actually asks for them. The
message then is passed through without ever being stored on the Postini server
(except for extracted junk e-mail, which is stored for a user-defined period).
Thus, e-mail isn't available for third-party observation.
Elsewhere at PCIA, Everypath (Santa Clara), a business-to-business
wireless-applications provider, announced a recent $10 million round of
funding from Sun Microsystems Inc., AC Ventures and others. "The backing
and the infrastructure support now offered by Sun validates our technology
and will greatly enhance our abilities as we move forward," said Prakash Iyer,
founder and chief technical officer at Everypath.
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