From
straitstimes
Billed as the next big thing for years, Bluetooth the wireless technology is unknown to most people.
WASHINGTON - The wireless technology called Bluetooth once created buzz about how the standard, designed to let gadgets communicate with one another, would upend the consumer-tech world.
But years after getting billed as the next big thing at industry conferences and conventions, the technology is unknown to most people.
In the Bluetooth world, data - calendar entries, contacts, notes, whatever - flow automatically between your Bluetooth-enabled computer, cell phone and handheld organiser whenever they get within about 300m of one another.
All those devices would include the technology because the necessary computer chips would be cheap and compact enough for manufacturers to put them in their products without a second thought.
But Bluetooth has not fulfilled the early forecasts. In 1999, research firm In-Stat/MDR predicted that 260 million Bluetooth chips would be sold in 2003. It now predicts 95 million.
The chipset is still larger than what vendors would want, and too expensive, said Mr Alex Slawsby, an analyst at IDC - which once predicted Bluetooth would be ubiquitous in laptops by the end of 2001.
With chips costing US$5 (S$8.60) to US$10, he said, manufacturers are reluctant to embrace Bluetooth, especially when consumers do not seem to care.
It is not that people are afraid of investing in a novel wireless technology. They have done so in huge numbers for a different kind - WiFi, which costs more than Bluetooth but transmits data much faster and farther. WiFi retail sales grew 242 per cent last year to US$283 million, according to the NPD Group, an industry analyst.
Bluetooth backers expected to see adoption start with cell phones, because people tend to replace their cell phones more often than their computers. But business has been slow in that market.
Nokia, the leading cell-phone manufacturer worldwide, makes eight Bluetooth-enabled phones among more than 30 models.
No. 2 manufacturer Motorola plans to introduce some later this year.
The numbers are even smaller in the handheld organiser and printer markets, and computer manufacturers have not pushed Bluetooth either.
Mr Michael McCamon, executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, an industry trade group, said adoption of the standard is starting to happen. 'It's just been a little bit slower than any of us expected,' he said.
Bluetooth may be getting less attention than WiFi these days, but Mr McCamon said both technologies have roles to play. 'Bluetooth is a Swiss Army knife,' he said. 'WiFi is a steak knife - it does one thing really well, where our value is our versatility.'
That versatility can cut both ways. While it is easy to understand the promise of WiFi - surf the Web from your back porch! - Bluetooth can be tougher to sell because its benefits sometimes seem so abstract or far-fetched. At a Bluetooth conference last year, for example, Toshiba showed prototypes of a Bluetooth-equipped washing machine, refrigerator and microwave oven, all connected to a home terminal to ease such tasks as downloading recipes.
Other emerging applications are more straightforward. Some car-makers will add Bluetooth to new models. Your Bluetooth phone could use your car stereo as its speakerphone for hands-free conversations.
Meanwhile, Bluetooth backers say they are going to lay off the hype. 'You can't let expectations get ahead of reality because you will pay,' Mr McCamon said.
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