Bluetooth took a beating in 2001.
The fledgling standard with the funny name, Bluetooth had stirred enthusiasm in technology circles for more than two years. It promised to simplify communications among cell phones, hand-held computers and other wireless devices by streaming information back and forth over short-range radio waves.
The trouble was that very few Bluetooth products had emerged, and a wireless networking standard known as Wi-Fi had arrived in coffee shops and airport lounges, stealing much of Bluetooth’s thunder.
Microsoft said it could not yet support such a young technology. Some engineers declared Bluetooth dead, and technology journalists began writing its obituary.
Yet even as Bluetooth’s demise was being predicted, Bluetooth chips were still being shipped from factories–as many as 13 million this year–and electronics-makers continued to work on designing products that use the technology. Bluetooth-connected devices like Sony camcorders trickled onto the market, and more are expected in 2002.
At the recent Bluetooth Developers Conference, the gadgets on display included cell phones connected wirelessly to earpieces, computers that beamed PowerPoint presentations directly to a projector and medical gear that streamed a patient’s vital statistics onto a display screen.
And in an important step, Microsoft announced that it would include software support for Bluetooth devices in Windows XP updates by next summer.
“I believe we are coming out of the trough,” Simon Ellis, chairman of the marketing committee for the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, a trade association, told developers at the conference.
The good news, he said, is that engineers have accomplished much of the technical work necessary for Bluetooth products to work together and avoid interference with other wireless devices. But he conceded, “Our customers are getting a little impatient.”
Named after Harald Bluetooth, a Danish king of the 10th century, Bluetooth sends information along radio waves to other equipped devices within about 30 feet. Researchers at Ericsson conceived of the technology in 1994 as a low-cost radio interface between mobile phones and their accessories that would allow for hands-free calls.
By 1999 the Bluetooth Special Interest Group had suggested that the technology could create vast numbers of “personal area networks.” A Palm would automatically synchronize its address book with a nearby PC, for example, or a laptop could surf the Web on a phone’s cellular network.
“The problems that Bluetooth ran into were caused by classic overhype: talking about the technology before it was even ready for prime time,” said Roy Dube, who leads the mobile business division of PricewaterhouseCoopers. He said he tells his clients to expect Bluetooth to emerge fully in the second half of 2002.
Wi-Fi competition
But this year some predicted that the Wi-Fi wireless standard, IEEE 802.11b, would render Bluetooth obsolete. Wi-Fi is faster than Bluetooth and makes connections across longer distances, up to about 300 feet.
Proponents of Bluetooth, however, argue that the industry has room for both technologies. Ellis faulted the assumption that faster is better. In this case speed comes with a price: battery life and cost. Bluetooth chips are less expensive to make and consume less power than Wi-Fi, so they are easier to build into small devices that run on batteries, like cell phones.
Indeed, cell phone-makers are expected to lead the charge.
Ericsson, Motorola and other phonemakers began selling Bluetooth-enabled handsets this year. Sony and Ericsson are committed to making 6 million Bluetooth-enabled handsets next year. Some computer-makers, including Toshiba and IBM, have also started offering Bluetooth chips in their laptops.
But for now, most Bluetooth products on the market in the United States are accessories, like the PC cards and USB adapters sold by 3Com.
Next month 3Com will begin selling a Bluetooth antenna that slides into the parallel port of a printer, allowing computer users to send a print command wirelessly.
But with most adapters selling for about $150, even 3Com acknowledged that few users will shell out hundreds of dollars just to eliminate a cable.
“When you have three or four or five uses, that’s compelling,” said Kurt Olsen, 3Com’s marketing manager for mobile and wireless products. “When you only have one, it’s way too expensive.”
Hewlett-Packard includes Bluetooth in a line of its printers, the 995c. But Lara Kahler, the company’s worldwide product marketing manager, said that Bluetooth would not be widely adopted until travelers could use it to connect computers to the Internet through their cell phones.
Sales abroad
Sales of Bluetooth devices in Asia and Europe, where a new generation of phone networks stream data faster, outpace those in the United States, where cellular connections transmit data at speeds far slower than 56-kilobits-per-second dial-up modems do. The new networks, known as 2.5 and 3G networks, are not expected to arrive widely in the U.S. until next spring at the earliest.
Still, electronics manufacturers are placing their bets on Bluetooth, as the showroom floor here reflected. Visteon Corp., a spinoff of the Ford Motor Group, displayed a hands-free phone system that it said would be available in cars next year. Using Bluetooth and voice-recognition software, already available in high-end Jaguar and Infiniti models, the system can detect a phone anywhere in the car, mute the car radio when calls come in and allow the driver to place a call by saying the number aloud.
Researchers from Philips Electronics showed a hand-held computer that roamed through several Bluetooth access points, using the nearest one to go on the Internet. Toshiba displayed an early version of a Bluetooth-enabled cash register that recognizes coupons stored in the memory of a cell phone. A Swedish company, Ortivus, showed off a gadget that rides along on a patient’s stretcher, measuring blood pressure, pulse and oxygen count through cables and wirelessly transmitting the readings to a display panel on the ambulance wall. Ortivus said that some ambulances in Sweden use the device.
But the most common product was one already on the market today: the wireless cell phone headset. Yet outside the doors of the demonstration hall, none were evident. Gathering near coffee urns, Bluetooth engineers and marketers pressed phones to their ears or spoke into microphones attached to wires dangling down to their belts. Even Bluetooth supporters, it seems, are not yet ready to abandon their wires.
Wireless networking contenders in battle
Bluetooth
Bluetooth replaces the cables that link cell phones, notebooks and hand-held computers. Using the 2.4-gigahertz band of the unlicensed spectrum, Bluetooth can send information at up to 1 megabit per second, considerably faster than a dial-up modem connection can. It is designed to work reliably at 30 feet, and sometimes reaches farther. The chips consume little power and could one day be produced cheaply enough to be built into every device.
802.11B
Also known as Wi-Fi, 802.11b wirelessly connects devices as far as 300 feet apart at up to 11 megabits per second, close to the speed of a digital subscriber line or cable modem. Wi-Fi can create ad hoc connections between devices but is most commonly used to tap into existing networks in offices, schools, airport lounges and coffee shops. It also uses the 2.4-gigahertz band of the unlicensed spectrum, which sometimes creates interference with Bluetooth.
802.11A
Dubbed Wi-Fi 5, 802.11a is much faster than its market predecessor, running at up to 54 megabits per second. Wi-Fi 5, which is just beginning to appear in PC cards and wireless base stations, eliminates some interference problems by operating on 5 gigahertz, a less crowded band of the spectrum.
802.11G
Still in development, this standard is intended as a higher-speed successor to 802.11b, providing data speeds comparable to those of 802.11a on devices created for the 2.4-gigahertz band.
HomeRF
Originally intended for home networking, it can operate up to a distance of 160 feet in the 2.4-gigahertz band. Improvements have boosted data speeds to a potential 10 megabits per second, but HomeRF lost ground when Intel opted to pursue other standards.
