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Is Bluetooth Dead?
An anonymous reader writes "According to the EETimes, Bluetooth is dead. From the article: "In a few short years, many will look back on Bluetooth as a lesson on marketing gone awry". So what do ya'll think? Does he have a point, or is Bluetooth not quite dead yet?"
....guess that means that BSD supports it?
Indeed it does. Just as USB and Firewire struggled in the beginning, so it goes with Bluetooth. Apple has picked up the torch, however, so I expect that in a couple of years there will be plenty of PCs (especially notebooks) that support it.
I think Apple with do for Bluetooth what they did with USB. My wife and I are living apart right now (she went back to school and I haven't moved yet) and we have been playing with iChat. I've been thinking of getting each of us a Bluetooth microphone/headset so we don't need to be stuck at the computer to talk to each other.
Troubles with bluetooth was predicted in November 1,2000
CARLSBAD, CA -- When a moderator at Red Herring's NDA conference on Monday asked an audience of entrepreneurs, VCs, and vendors what business models will come out of the Bluetooth short-range wireless protocol, the room fell silent.
Finally, an undaunted Bluetooth entrepreneur leapt to break the silence. But the long pause when a roomful of 50 supposedly forward-thinking technologists and investors was struck silent indicates that Bluetooth has a long way to go.
"I get a real sense today that Bluetooth is a technology in search of an application," proclaimed one attendee, clearly annoyed that no one in the room could cite any research indicating a real market opportunity for Bluetooth-enabled devices and software applications.
Bluetooth is a technology standard that allows for a wireless local area network (LAN) that proponents say will rid corporate campuses, hotels, and airports of wires now needed to accommodate mobile workers. It's a step up from infrared technology, which requires devices to be in the line of sight of a network base station or another infrared-enabled device to establish a connection and relay data. Bluetooth systems talk to each other via a 2.4 GHz radio embedded on a chip.
The Bluetooth protocol was formed in 1998 by several computer and handheld device companies that would benefit from the technology, including IBM, Intel, Toshiba, and cell phone makers Nokia and Ericsson . The Bluetooth Special Interest Group numbers more than 2,000 members.
THEY'VE GOT SPUNK
Attendees of the panel discussion -- "Bluetooth: Has a new industry been created?" -- were a feisty, skeptical bunch. They put panelist Skip Bryan, Ericsson's director of technology market development, on the spot by wondering out loud, in so many words, why they should care about Bluetooth-connected products if no one knows whether businesses and consumers want them.
Mr. Bryan tried to placate the audience.
"This is such a big marketplace, it's hard to put your finger on where it's going to explode," he said. "We're going to see things happen that we've only seen in science fiction movies."
That comment may not have been the best thing to say to a savvy audience that has seen its share of over-hyped technologies and products -- from the Apple's Newton to the pen computing disaster to Oracle's network computer. (A few might even have been thinking about Scout Electromedia, which sold a reported 3,000 Palm-like devices to consumers before it shut its doors last week, making the $100 devices worthless.)
It wasn't lost on the audience that Bluetooth proponents once promised that products would hit the market in mid-1999. And despite the long list of heavy hitters behind Bluetooth, important players such as Palm aren't on the bandwagon. Palm ran a demo of a Bluetooth device at the CeBIT trade show in February, but the company hasn't committed to producing a Bluetooth-imbedded Palm in 2001, a company spokeswoman said. Palm plans to ship a Bluetooth snap-on module "sometime next year," she added.
Despite the lack of consumer research, companies in the device-making business are confident there will be a market for Bluetooth devices and are preparing to put them on store shelves.
A few Bluetooth-enabled devices are scheduled to enter the market before year's end. Infospace.com , an infrastructure services company, and Xircom , a mobile network access provider, joined to develop a Bluetooth-enabled credit-card-size personal digital assistant (PDA) that is scheduled to ship in November. Ericsson is set to ship Bluetooth-enabled cellular phones to retailers in the first quarter of next year.
"Bluetooth is going to be the de facto protocol for any kind of personal internetworking products," said Miten Mehta, business development vice president at Infospace, referring to PDAs, PCs, laptops, and cell phones.
FINALLY, SOME NUMBERS
Some research firms are projecting fast sales
Bluetooth is dead -- or rather stillborn -- only in the United States.
/grr
And it is all Qualcomm's fault.
It's been years -- and years -- since folks overseas and using GSM phones have been able to use bluetooth on a daily basis. Since the US has stuck mostly with CDMA cellular networks (hey, I use Verizon myself, the coverage can't be beat) that means they've stuck with Qualcomm chips.
Every six months a rumor comes around that FINALLY Qualcomm is going to release a CDMA chipset with bluetooth support, and every six months it turns out to be a pipe dream.
I would love to give a nice kick in the nuts to Qualcomm's entire management team. And to the heads of Verizon and Sprint for not demanding 2 years ago that Qualcomm get off their asses and integrate this tech.
Everybody spent so much time and money in the last few years on 2.5/3G networks that are completely unprofitable because it never occurred to them that surfing the web from your PHONE was going to suck. But if I could use my computer or even Palm/PPC without needing a custom $60 cable, it might be useful!
And now the cell companies get to watch as 802.11 starts to eat away at their potential data business, when we wouldn't have NEEDED 802.11 hotspots on every block if our damn phones worked the way they were supposed to 3 years ago!
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
As I've stated before, Microsoft does not want Bluetooth to exist. IMO. Look, it enables small devices to communicate without the PC and to Microsoft, that is a NO-NO.
Bluetooth works great for lower powered devices like cell phones, PDA's, barcode scanners, GPS's, etc for a couple of reasons. It's really all about low power/battery powered devices. Use a handheld with WiFi and you'll get 2-3 hours of continuous use while Bluetooth gets you 6-8 hours of continous use. And sure Bluetooth is slower but is 100-500Kbps a deal killer? I've seen people try to use WiFi as a wireless solution only to fail because of the large battery needed to get through one business day. Anyway, 2 features of Bluetooth which make it needed/useful:
1) Bluetooth has a low range/low power spec so it can work at 2m( class 3 ) and draw single digit mA current or 10m( class 2 ) and draw 20-40 mA or even 100m( class 1 ) and draw in the high 70-120 mA like WiFi.
2) It provides a standard for these low powered devices to communicate with each other. Not just connecting but actually communicating such as with PAN.
And, look ma, NO WINDOWS! Microsoft supports Bluetooth like they support GNU/Linux. With one hand out and smiling while the the other hand holds a chain saw. Customers be damned.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
"Look, it enables small devices to communicate without the PC and to Microsoft, that is a NO-NO."
That comment is unsubstantiated in this comment. What evidence does the poster have to make this statement?
Apple's contribution to getting USB going was shipping systems where USB was *required* not optional. Sure your Packard Hell had the port, but what peripherals could you get for it? My computer had the port, but nobody made anything worth getting that had the port.
Notice Wireless Ethernet. It was available elsewhere, but Apple pushed AirPort out and marketed it as a reason why you'd want to buy Apple. They didn't invent it, they weren't first to have it, but they did manage to make it more popular than it would otherwise have been.
Gentoo Sucks
A couple of friends of mine in college worked on a bluetooth engineering competition. They did not have fond things to say about it. Now we've got devices billed as bluetooth-enabled like the MS wireless keyboard -- its transceiver can't actually work with any other bluetooth devices!
Basically it's slow, fidgety, has poor market penetration and isn't a well-supported standard: too many incompatible implementations. For things like wireless mice it's overkill; for moving data around it's too slow and short range.
I agree completely. I got a 12" PowerBook recently but my phone doesn't have Bluetooth. So now while looking for a new phone I guarentee that I will only buy one with Bluetooth. Especially after the idiocy of me scrolling through every entry in my current phone and entering everyone's phone number into the macs address book.
"In wine there is wisdom. In beer there is strength. In water there is bacteria." --Old German Proverb
They did the same for LCD displays, Firewire devices and CD drives. And one could argue that the lack of a floppy drive forced iMac users to go online to move files.
If Microsoft's unofficial motto is "Embrace and Extend," Apple's surely is "Embrace and Market the Shit Out Of." And I'm sure it's to their advantage. Think what MS could do if they could just sit up and say, "You know what? No PCI-33 devices will be supported in the next Windows. It's the latest and fastest or it's nothing. And let's take the resources we save and put them into designing an interface that doesn't make people want to punch CEO Steve Balmer in his fat pink gut."
On second thought, don't. Because MS would embrace and extend that concept too, and drop support for any hardware that "exists currently."
Hey freaks: now you're ju