One third of US mobile phones to have Bluetooth in '04

About time too

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Wireless, 5th December 2003 09:17 GMT

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Nearly a third of US cellphones will feature Bluetooth by the first half of next year, predicts analyst company ABI Research. In a slightly riskier prediction, ABI reckons that by 2008 a fifth of new cars sold will carry Bluetooth, citing commitments from Acura, Audi, Lexus, Lincoln, Maybach, and Toyota to install the wireless technology.

It has been a rocky ride, as more than six years have passed since Bluetooth was first announced. Now its seems the economics are starting to make sense. The adoption of the technology is primarily fuelled by the growth of GSM networks in the US, with AT&T Wireless gradually switching from the similar but incompatible TDMA technology.

But more growth should be expected, as Nokia this year began selling phones to CDMA carriers Verizon and Sprint. And it's amazing what competition can do: in June Qualcomm announced a partnership with Broadcom to bring Bluetooth to market, although Qualcomm had announced a 3G chipset with Bluetooth two years ago.

"Wi-Fi got a lot of press and quite rightly, while Bluetooth got a lot of bad press," Intel researcher Tom Wand told us today. Wand is heading Intel's Personal Server project, which features both, and is similar to our "Bluepod" musings of a year ago. [Full interview to follow]. "But what people didn't report was that cellphone is a 450 million device market a year, and there are a billion plus worldwide. So if you start getting 10 to 20 per cent of cellphones with Bluetooth, that becomes a huge user base."

Elsewhere, Intel has said that UltraWide Band UWB will most likely adopt Bluetooth interfaces, making it easier for device manufacturers and developers to carry forward their know-how. ®