High chip prices will push out Bluetooth technology until 2002, says analyst
Semiconductor Business News
(11/07/00, 03:44:22 PM EDT)
NEWTON, Mass. -- Despite the product announcements and hype surrounding Bluetooth, the wireless technology will not reach the mass market until 2002, due in part to high chip prices, according to a new report released today from Meridien Research Inc., a market research house based here.
The price of a Bluetooth-enabled chip currently sells for around $27, but the product must to fall to the $10 to $15 range in order for it to reach market acceptance among OEMs and consumers, said Meridien analyst Jennifer Schmidt. "Based on our analysis, we don't think the chips will be that cheap anytime soon," Schmidt said.
Other analysts believe that a Bluetooth-enabled chip must sell for $5 or less before it becomes a viable solution in the market.
Many chip makers and OEMs originally expected that Bluetooth would become a mainstream product by late-2000 or early-2001, but most observers do not see this technology taking off in volumes until 2002 or beyond.
While several chip makers and OEMs have announced Bluetooth-enabled products in the market, the technology still suffers from high costs and compatibility issues. One of the problems with the technology is incompatibilty among the various radio-frequency (RF) chips in the market, analysts said.
Bluetooth is a technology that links laptops, mobile phones and other portable devices from various manufacturers over a short-haul, wireless network at speeds up to 1-megabit-per-second. One of the advantages of Bluetooth is that the technology does not require a line of sight.
In 1998, Bluetooth was originally conceived by Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia, and Toshiba. Several chip makers have announced Bluetooth-enabled chips, such as Atmel, Cambridge, Conexant, Ericsson, Motorola, National, Philips, Qualcomm, SiliconWave, and a slew of others.
Many of these chip makers have begun shipping their Bluetooth-enabled baseband controllers or RF chips in the market. |
