Bluetooth To Work In Nearly 1Bil Devices By 2005 - Report
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[Newsbytes News Network]
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA, U.S.A., Newsbytes via NewsEdge Corporation : Although the technology has gained no foothold in the marketplace, analysts at the Cahners In-Stat Group research firm today issued a rosy forecast for the radio-based Bluetooth wireless technology.
Bluetooth will shine in the coming years, In-Stat predicts, with some 955 million Bluetooth-enabled devices flooding the market by 2005.
The report appears even more optimistic than a 1999 In-Stat report predicting that manufacture of Bluetooth-enabled equipment would "easily exceed" 200 million units in 2003. That report said by 2005 the market for Bluetooth products would exceed $3 billion. Today's report ups the ante, predicting that the market for Bluetooth radio and "baseband silicon" products will rise to $4.4 billion in 2005.
"2000 was a year of trials and tribulations for Bluetooth," said Joyce Putscher, director of In-Stat's Consumer and Converging Markets and Technologies Group, quoted in a press release. "However, positive signs are here as more silicon is going into production, more products are closing in on production schedules and are coming to market very soon."
According to Newton's Telecom Dictionary, the plan behind Bluetooth - a radio- based technology invented by Scandinavian telecom firm Ericsson - was to create a standardized protocol of wireless communication between devices. It would neutralize the hassle of getting inundated with incompatible mobile electronic devices. For frequent travelers, for instance, everything from smart pagers, cell phones, personal digital assistants and laptops could synch together and exchange data, and the consumer could leave that suitcase full of cables at home.
One example of the way the technology reportedly could work: a mobile phone could interconnect with a desktop or notebook PC using the Bluetooth transmission standard to access the Internet over the phone's mobile data system, and then link the user's voice to the computer.
Bluetooth technology works through tiny short-range FM radio transceivers embedded into mobile devices, which can be installed directly, or through adapters. It can wirelessly link devices up to a range of about 30 feet. To get the technology rolling, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) - a consortium of industry giants including Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba - was formed in 1998 to work on uniform specifications. The SIG group reportedly has grown to include more than 2,000 companies.
However, three years after SIG's formation, Bluetooth technology is all but invisible to the public. At the recent Comdex Chicago trade show early this month, representatives at the booth of retail giant CompUSA on the convention's showroom floor had not yet heard of the technology. In January, only one genuine Bluetooth demonstration was presented at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, according to published reports.
By industry consensus, 2001 was to be the year that Bluetooth finally got its cavities filled, and the In-Stat report today still reflects that belief. The report indicates that the technology will begin to take hold this year, and will experience a 360 percent five-year compound annual growth rate up to 2005.
In-Stat reports that the first "hot-spot" projects are popping up in places like hotels, shopping malls and airports, with more expected to emerge later this year. The report also says that the industry is buzzing with ongoing application development that will only increase over time.
Sarah Kim, a Bluetooth analyst for Yankee Group, agrees that the technology will take hold in the market, but only as a niche application. She also believes that In-Stat's prediction of nearly 1 billion Bluetooth-enabled devices by 2005 is wildly optimistic. "From zero to 1 billion in five years?" she said. "Right."
It's not that she wants "to be completely down" on the technology, Kim said. "I think there are some very specific applications that make sense for Bluetooth," she said. For instance, short-range wireless data swaps between PCs and handheld devices or between phones and headsets make a lot of sense, she said. "In that kind of thing there's no question of the practicality of the application itself," Kim said. "It doesn't cause the user to rethink the way they do things."
But she said many vendors are hyping the technology's ability to do things that would force consumers to completely rethink the use of their products, a factor Kim said could either cause the technology to be rejected outright, or greatly slow its adoption.
"I think there is going to be success for Bluetooth if people can identify real specific things about it that make sense," Kim said. "But overall, the rollout has been slow."
Part of the reason for that slowness is the tremendous number of corporate players in the Bluetooth consortium, Kim said. "So many players want so many things," she said. "'I want this change to the protocol, I want that change to the protocol.' At the end of the day, it's already too late."
Kim said she thinks any forecasts about Bluetooth's future have to rely on guesswork. She said in her own work, she refuses to estimate how many Bluetooth devices will be manufactured until she hears from semiconductor industry players that devices are in production.
"It's going to take a while," Kim said.
In-Stat's Putscher did not return calls in time for this story.
The In-Stat report can be purchased for $3,995. Visit instat.com or contact Erin McKeighan at emckeighan@instat.com for more information.
Reported by Newsbytes.com, newsbytes.com
12:52 CST
(20010425/WIRES TELECOM, ONLINE, PC, BUSINESS/BLUETOOTH/PHOTO)
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