10Meters.com Special Report

December 12, 2001 – Easy to implement, easy to use and easy to buy – these are the factors that will drive Bluetooth solutions into the mainstream market. That's the consensus of the wireless enthusiasts, software developers and high-tech companies gathered in San Francisco this week for the Bluetooth Developers conference.

"Support continues to grow for high volume, easy to implement wireless standards value of wireless in computing applications," said keynote speaker Simon Ellis, chairman of the Bluetooth SIG marketing committee. "The Bluetooth specification is meeting the needs of existing and new applications for wireless products by diligently focusing on worldwide interoperability and ease of use."

Microsoft Weighs In

A standard for short-range wireless communications, Bluetooth has struggled to gain widespread acceptance because of cost and compatibility issues. One company that will help solve some of the compatibility concerns: Microsoft, which announced Dec. 11 that it will integrate Bluetooth support into an "update" for its new Windows XP operating system.

"Bluetooth wireless technology enables several scenarios that are important to our embedded and desktop operating system customers," said Dr. Michael Foley, wireless architect at Microsoft. "To address these needs, Windows CE .NET already includes Bluetooth support and we are pleased to provide more detail this week regarding Microsoft's Bluetooth support roadmap for Windows XP."

Microsoft will leverage solutions from Silicon Wave and chips from CSR for its Windows XP support.

$5 Goal Can Be Met

For Bluetooth to gain appeal for manufacturers, experts say the price for chipsets must be within the range of $5 – a mark that has proved difficult for most chipmakers. But several companies announced they will hit the $5 range with new chips. Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector said its new Bluetooth platform, which can co-exist with competing wireless technology 802.11b, will cost as low as $5.90 in volume orders, while Texas Instruments priced its new BSN6050 baseband processor at $5 for volume orders.

Promising to come in under $5: Sweden's Spirea, which is touting its BlueTraC as the industry's lowest-costing RF transceiver chip. "By optimizing the RF CMOS design process, we have been able to develop extremely small and low power Bluetooth components that cost far less than the industry average," said Anders Oldeback, Spirea's vice president of marketing & sales. "While the rest of the industry is struggling to produce solutions at $5, Spirea's products are poised to solution cost significantly lower."

Ericsson also weighed in with a new "fourth-generation" radio. Calling it one of the most "affordable" chips in the industry, Ericsson said its "on-chip" integration can reduce the number of components needed to build a Bluetooth system by more than half.

"For consumer applications, we must recognize the total cost for adding Bluetooth, not only the chip cost," says Ericsson's Ronald Wilting. "By embedding all the radiosensitive circuitry on-chip, we are able to provide a Bluetooth radio for which the cost of the external requirements and components is the lowest in the industry."

Target: End Users

While cost is a concern, Bluetooth's lack of adoption in the enterprise is also moving rather slowly. What's the answer? End users, said 3Com's Troy Holtby, product manager for mobile products. "Corporate users have a tremendous influence on what IT managers adopt. Take the Palm - because end users brought them into the office and demanded support, they're standard now." Holtby said he expects Bluetooth technology to be pushed into the enterprise in the same way.

3Com is exhibiting several wireless connectivity products at the conference, including its Wireless Bluetooth PC Card, which allows mobile users to instantly share information such as data files, text documents and contact lists) among Bluetooth-enabled personal devices .

Among the other Bluetooth products being promoted:

• EnterpriseMobility, a "wireless office infrastructure" solution from Norwood Systems.

• Bluetooth Wireless Networking for Pocket PC, a development kit from Socket Communications and Pico Communications.

• Fingertip, a handheld platform, based on Intel's StrongARM CPU and Microsoft CE, that supports Bluetooth and GPS (Global Positioning Systems) technologies.