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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (52349)	9/17/2001 8:20:55 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

US$5 Bluetooth chips by 2003? By Reuters 17/9/2001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, the world's leading manufacturer of Bluetooth chips for short-distance wireless networks, said on Friday it will have chips on sale below US$5 by 2003. It is also working on a single chip that will combine the world's two main short-distance wireless networks, Bluetooth and WiFi--also known as 802.11b. "We'll go past US$5, not next year probably, but the year after,'' said Simon Finch, in charge of strategic marketing at the closely held Cambridge-based company, which is one of the 25 hottest start-ups in Europe, according to venture capitalist community Tornado-Insider.com. The company currently sells the chips at between US$8 and US$10--when ordered in large quantities--which limits usage to expensive electronic products. If the price drops below US$5 a chip, the industry expects Bluetooth to be used in most devices. Some four years after its public launch, Bluetooth technology is finally making inroads in the electronics industry and this autumn, it debuts in products such as mobile phones, printers, portable PCs and video cameras from dozens of manufacturers. These devices have a radio chip in them, 1 sq cm in size and 2 mm thick, which replaces cables by creating a secure radio connection. Over 2,000 companies have adopted the open Bluetooth-standard, which was invented by engineers from Swedish mobile phone equipment maker Ericsson. Finch, talking to Reuters in an interview, said Cambridge Silicon Radio provides the chips for some 50 percent of all Bluetooth-enabled products currently on sale. Japan's Sony is an investor in the company. The British start-up claims it has clinched an unexpected six- to 12-month lead over its rivals because it was the first to use cheap semiconductor production methods, the first to integrate the radio and the baseband modules on a single chip, and the first to link Bluetooth with the USB cable port. To stay ahead Finch said it now looks to integrate the other main short-distance wireless standard, WiFi. This standard has been developed by the computer industry and operates in the same free radio frequency spectrum of 2.4GHz. It is mainly popular in the United States. Despite concerns for radio interference between the two technologies, intensive testing has shown that the two can work together simultaneously, except when the Bluetooth-connection is used for voice communications, Finch said. Bluetooth was designed for data traffic between devices, but in theory, it is possible to route a call on a mobile phone via a Bluetooth connection to an office telephone network, rather than use the more expensive network of a wireless operator.