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Nokia's Wibree Takes on Bluetooth
narramissic writes "Nokia has developed a new, short-range wireless technology, called Wibree, that it says is a lot more power efficient than Bluetooth, which means it could be used in smaller and less costly devices. It can also use the same radio and antenna components as Bluetooth, helping keep costs down further. Wibree could compete with Bluetooth in the workplace as a way to link keyboards and other peripherals to computers. But it could also have more interesting applications for consumers, in devices such as wrist watches, toys and sports equipment." What does this say about Bluetooth, considering Nokia is a member of the Bluetooth Promoters group?
The network effect is cementing bluetooth in place. I can buy bluetooth keyboards, mice, earpieces already. OTOH, like Sony's memory stick, this may just be a way of locking dumb Nokia customers into a proprietary solution.
Deleted
Sounds like they are trying to succeed in a non-existant market. The actual applications of Bluetooth are few and far between. The 'wireless' office never amounted to much and you know you look like an idiot with that earpiece and talking to yourself at Starbucks.
So what is a company to do? How about rebrand the technology with a worse name than it originally had? That's the ticket!
The same can be said about just about any new tech that is to replace and not be compatible with old tech. USB, IMHO, did it right. USB2.0 is backwards compatible with USB1.1
Perhaps in the same way USB 2.0 emerged, Bluetooth 2.0 is due? Faster, lower power requirements, backward compatibility. Seems like the natural and sensible thing to do.
From the summary:
It says that Bluetooth is years old and now some that is (possibly) better has come along, nothing more.
One can only hope they've invested more time in securing the communications channel than in Bluetooth. Bluesnarfing for the win! Or something. =/
James
I have a Nokia phone, and it has Bluetooth.
When I bought the phone, I also bought a Bluetooth headset. I gave up on the Bluetooth pretty quickly: The headset would only run for about five hours before needing to be recharged, and the phone's standby time was cut down massively.
This isn't a complaint about Bluetooth as such. It's more that current devices, as delivered, don't provide long-enough standby time, never mind talk time, when Bluetooth is enabled.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
The main problems with Bluetooth in my mind are complexity and cost. Qualifying a Bluetooth chip is a major pain in the butt. You need to qualify the radio part, the stack and profiles separately depending on what kind of product you have. And speaking of profiles, there are something like 30 Bluetooth profiles. Most of which overlap! So often time when you are implementing one profile you also cover all the mandatory features of another so you have to claim that one as well since you are seen as using that profiles IP! It's crazy.
Then there is the cost. 10k to list your product. If you want to add something to it after you listed it...10k please. Not to mention the testing. 30k please.
Bluetooth was going to be less then 2 bucks per radio. It's still almost double that. The Bluetooth SIG is way out of control.
IMO Nokia is smart to jump ship. However, they cant go it alone. If they were able to get Motorola on board and perhaps Samsung, I can see no reason why a lower cost alternative would not work. Assuming that data rates are there.
Having seen a few presentations about network standards, and especially wireless network standards, I think that Nokia is just trying to enhance the existing technology. Granted, there may not be a strong commercial gain to it, but the fact remains that bluetooth has been a more or less static protocol since its inception. Wifi on the other hand went through several revisions: 802.11a, b/g, now the upcoming n... There's a lot of development put into wifi. I attended a conference from Intel researchers saying they were working on enhancing the 802.11 protocol to work in a de-centralized manner, so I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking: well Wibre might just push Bluetooth further than it is. Using the same hardware base is also good, because it'll bring down manufacturing costs. I'm willing to bet we'll see the Bluetooth consortium jump on the bandwagon and help nokia widespread Wibre under a label like "Bluetooth 2.0" or something similar. Hardware and software updates all the time, why wouldn't protocols?
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
I got modded down as 'troll' and 'offtopic' for stating this ealier, but aside from the corporate competition, there is also the social/ethnic competition between Swedes and Finns. Actually, I think it is felt more by the Finns that they are in the shadow of Sweden. Sweden ruled Finland for a long time, and Sweden is wealthier than Finland, and Finns sort of have this complex about not being wholly Scandinavian.
I am not just making this up. If you read the Finnish epic, which is said to characterize the finnish temperament, the hero Vainamoinen is actually an anti-hero. He is born old, never in his prime. One of the first stories about him is when he approaches a young bathing maiden and she runs away screaming. In the climax of the story, he rallies the troops to win back a magical device from a tribe of harpies, only to lose it in the sea during the epic battle. He's just not a winner.
The parent I posed my original topic had said that 'a better tech had come along'. What a socially naive geek perspective. Sure, new things just drop out of the sky like clockwork. People are never motivated by petty social identies, like Ohio State vs. Michigan, US vs. Canada, MS vs. Apple, Ericsson vs. Nokia, or Finland vs. Swedend.
So my votes goes for a Nokia vs. Ericsson, Finland vs. Sweden thing.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
That Bluetooth isn't cheap or power efficient enough for certain devices.
:)
That's about all
Not that Bluetooth isn't good and that Nokia don't like promoting it or using it, but Bluetooth is not a panacea - just a standard.