After years of hype promising seamless, short-range
wireless connectivity among handheld devices, Bluetooth is showing
signs of having overcome some of the early problems associated with
the technology. But are growing adoption and gradual technical
improvements enough to save Bluetooth from being overcome by
advances in wireless technology?
At first glance, technical improvements and shipment numbers
look promising for Bluetooth's future.
Suppliers are shipping one million Bluetooth-enabled
devices, mainly mobile phones, every week, according to Mike
McCamon, executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group
(SIG).
Sixty-five per cent of those Bluetooth-enabled products are
being sold in Europe, with 25% shipping to Asia and 10% to the
Americas, he said.
"Bluetooth is getting quite good adoption in mobile phones and
even in laptops," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice-president and
chief technology officer at Intel.
As adoption spreads, the technology continues to improve,
although some usage issues remain unresolved.
Bluetooth SIG announced on 5 November the adoption of Bluetooth
Specification Version 1.2, which adds several features, including
faster connections between devices and adaptive frequency hopping,
which is designed to reduce interference with other wireless
devices.
Devices based on the latest Bluetooth specification are expected
to begin appearing on the market over the next few months, SIG
said.
"In many regards, [Bluetooth's] been complex and not been well
tested, so there have been a number of usage model issues around
it, but those seem to be resolved," Gelsinger said.
IBM and Apple Computer are among the companies that have begun
selling notebook computers offering Bluetooth connectivity, and the
technology has also begun finding its way into other hardware
devices.
Taiwan's LiteOn Technology has developed a Personal Media
Gateway, called PMG100, which is designed to function as a single
cellular gateway for a variety of portable Bluetooth-enabled
devices, including a handheld messaging terminal and a phone.
Incorporating support for GSM and GPRS networks, the PMG100 will
be slightly larger than a pak of cards and includes a micro-router
and micro-server capabilities.
Logitech, a major supplier of cordless devices that use older
27MHz radio frequency technology, has introduced several Bluetooth
devices since September.
Bluetooth, like 802.11b or Wi-Fi technology, uses frequencies in
the 2.4GHz spectrum. It has become more attractive as the installed
base grows and the price of chips has declined with higher volumes,
according to Alexis Richard, Logitech's product marketing manager
for Bluetooth systems. But he still says it is too complicated for
many users.
"We know that Bluetooth still has some limitations. I think it's
still for early adopters; it is not a mainstream technology yet,"
Richard said.
Problems will persist, but Bluetooth should become a mainstream
technology, at least for simple uses, said Gartner analyst Ken
Dulaney.
Suppliers will eventually make the user experience more
consistent. "It'll take a lot of calls to the customer service
department and then they'll finally get it," he said.
Today, Bluetooth is reasonably easy to use between two products
from the same supplier, and for some simple functions such as
getting a headset to work with a phone.
But an application such as synchronising a phone or handheld
device with a PC is still too complicated for the average
consumer.
And then there is the issue of cost. Bluetooth remains more
expensive than 27MHz technology, although the gap has narrowed over
the past year, Logitech's Richard said. The estimated street price
of Logitech's Bluetooth mouse is $99, compared with $69 for a
similar product using 27MHz.
The extra value customers get from Bluetooth lies in the hub
Logitech supplies with the mouse and a corresponding keyboard, both
introduced in October. The hub, which uses a driver from Widcomm,
can support a wide variety of uses, Richard said.
For example, the hub comes with software that gives a
notification on the PC screen when there is a text message sent to
a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone. Clicking on an icon then allows
the user to start exchanging text messages with the sender using
the PC keyboard instead of the phone keypad.
Widcomm, the driver supplier, moved to expand the usefulness of
Bluetooth devices by adding support for several profiles in a major
driver upgrade in June.
The BTW (Bluetooth for Windows) 1.4 software includes profiles
for interface devices such as keyboards and mice and for personal
area networks such as ad hoc groups of coworkers with portable
devices, according to Rajiv Kumar, co-founder and chief technology
officer of Widcomm. Several other device makers, including
Logitech, are using the software.
Bluetooth's future prospects are restrained by limited bandwidth
of around 500Kbps, Intel's Gelsinger said.
"If I want to load images from my camera into my PC it would be
extremely slow to do that over a Bluetooth connection," Gelsinger
said.
This is where Bluetooth faces a challenge from emerging
short-range wireless networking technologies, such as Ultra
Wideband (UWB).
UWB technology was first developed in the 1980s and is used in
some types of radar. More recently, the technology has been
considered for high-speed, short-range wireless communications.
"We think (UWB) will have some of the same characteristics of
Bluetooth, being short-range, low-power, but will be able to do it
at much higher bandwidth," said Gelsinger, adding Intel believes
UWB will offer bandwidth of up to 500Mbps.
Despite the great promise of UWB, there are drawbacks to the
technology. One of the problems is that UWB does not have
regulatory approval in many countries outside the US, according to
the Ultra Wideband Working Group (UWBWG), which means that
UWB-enabled devices cannot be sold or used in these countries.
"However, there is significant interest in many countries and
steps are being taken to explore a number of foreign markets and
regulatory processes," the UWBWG's website said.
At the product level, Logitech's Richard said UWB is not ready
to go into products.
"We're not saying Bluetooth is the winner and that's the way it
will be for the next 10 years. We don't know. But today, that's the
way it is," he said.
Even if UWB does replace Bluetooth at some point in the future,
vestiges of the technology could remain in use for many years to
come, Gelsinger said.
"Our goal with [UWB] would be to use all of the software that
Bluetooth has developed, all of the upper layer stack of the
protocol, and just put a new physical layer underneath it," he
said.
However, not everyone believes that Bluetooth will be replaced
by UWB.
Gartner's Dulaney said the greater bandwidth offered by UWB is
not necessary for most of the applications Bluetooth was designed
to handle. In addition, many Bluetooth-enabled devices do not make
full use of the bandwidth that Bluetooth offers.
Suppliers should focus on improving the usability of Bluetooth
instead of looking to new technologies as a replacement for
Bluetooth.
Sumner Lemon and Stephen Lawson write for IDG News
Service