On more ignorant Bt -article
My take: Do you folks know which is the most useful
Bluetooth apps? Yes it's talkin and chatting without any bill -networkoperator. The Big Telcos are not going to get a single dime here. Picture children playing and chating via wireles sets in a schoolyard.
Parents will simply love it. (In Finland usual average schoolchild uses aprx. 100 $ a month cellphonebills. Just chating via SMS, shortmessages,like e-mails to pals. )
Bluetooth network is cost-free area.
Bluetooth will make revenue streams of large companies such like Nokia, Motorola, Ericcson, Qcom, BRCM, Arm
and game and softwaremakers in inside the phones (most of them are European) but but not a penny
for SrintPCS, Deutsche or Brittish Telecos.etc!
Here Comes the Bluetooth Standard
By Pat Dorsey
Stocks Editor, Morningstar.com
Special to CNBC.com
If current trends stay intact, somewhere in the neighborhood of 425 million mobile telephone handsets will be sold this year, about 50 percent more than the 280 million or so that rolled off the shelves last year. What is the conclusion? People like to talk to each other without being tied to a particular place.
What is less common right now is devices that talk to each other wirelessly. But a radio standard with the curious name of Bluetooth should go a long way toward giving our gizmos the same freedom we currently enjoy. So far, the technology has been long on hype and short on results, but the first Bluetooth-equipped products should hit the stores in a few months, and the odds are decent that Bluetooth use will skyrocket over the next few years as component costs come down.
Essentially, Bluetooth is a short-range complement to cellular networks that will allow equipped devices to communicate with each other within a range of about 30 feet, at speeds in the range of 500 to 700 kilobits per second, about as fast as a cable modem on a slow day. Although 30 feet doesn't sound like much, there are many potential applications for a short-range, high-bandwidth standard like this.
On a basic level, Bluetooth would enable your Palm to automatically synchronize with your PC whenever you come back to your desk, even if your Palm is still in your briefcase. Printing from your laptop without plugging in a cable would also be a typical early-stage application, as would connecting your laptop to the Internet via your cell phone, without taking the phone off your belt and plugging it in. (One of the first Bluetooth devices on the market will be a wireless headset from Ericsson {ERICY} that will communicate with a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone.)
More fanciful -- and far-off -- uses for Bluetooth might be having a boarding pass readied for you at the airport just by walking through security, or having the e-mail you wrote during the flight automatically sent when you walk off the plane past a Bluetooth-enabled Internet terminal. Eventually, it could eliminate the need for just about any short-distance cord that doesn't carry electricity.
If all this sound like those AT&T Corp. {T} commercials from a few years back ("Ever done brain surgery while cooking breakfast and sending e-mail? You will."), you're perfectly justified in being skeptical. After all, the technology industry is famous for stoking the press with Astounding Stories visions that never materialize. (Remember the videophone?)
But though Bluetooth faces some hurdles until mass adoption sets in -- the chipsets need to come down in price from about $20 to $5, for example, and there are still some interoperability kinks to be ironed out -- it is a technology that really might become A Next Big Thing, if not The Next Big Thing. Bluetooth isn't owned by a single company, and so the kinds of royalty fights that have become commonplace in Silicon Valley are unlikely to slow its adoption. Moreover, everybody who is anybody has someone working on Bluetooth, from obvious candidates, such as Ericsson, Motorola Inc. {MOT} Nokia Corp. {NOK}, to folks like International Business Machines Corp. {IBM}, Intel Corp. {INTC} and Microsoft Corp. {MSFT}. (These are just the big boys; the Bluetooth initiative has more than 2,000 members.)
Of course, standards like Bluetooth do face a catch-22: For Bluetooth to be useful, it has to be ubiquitous. But what incentive do manufacturers have to put it in devices until it is ubiquitous? However, I think that Metcalfe's Law, which says that the value of a network grows exponentially as the number of connected users increases, helps explain why Bluetooth has a good shot at becoming huger than huge. It is one of the first steps to a world where technology is no longer something we think about and fiddle with but is instead a collection of pervasive, always-on services that make our lives easier.
So, how do you "play" Bluetooth? Aside from a host of cool-but-tiny private chip companies, such as Cambridge Silicon Radio in the United Kingdom, you are probably better off thinking about bigger-picture beneficiaries from the growing popularity of mobile communications and computing. On the chip side, ARM Holdings plc {ARMHY} Broadcom Corp. {BRCM}, Conexant Systems Inc. {CNXT} and Motorola all have significant Bluetooth initiatives in the works and are all also major players in mobile communications, while the usual suspects such as Ericsson and Nokia are moving things along in the handset world. (As a bonus, Nokia is still trading well off its highs after some silly short-term worries zapped the stock in late July.)
In any case, remember that it is going be some time before Bluetooth applications make a dent in the revenue streams of large companies like these, and that it is entirely within the realm of possibility -- though not, I think, likelihood -- that Bluetooth won't gain critical mass before competing wireless standards supplant it.
Still, keep an eye out for product announcements. It will be fun to see what the Bluetooth faithful whip up and roll out. |
