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Bluetooth: dead or alive?

Posted on 21 Nov 2002 at 15:36

Everyone's heard of Bluetooth, but will it fulfil its many promises or go the way of the dodo? Tim Danton looks for signs of life

You saw your first Bluetooth device three years ago and were suitably amazed. Now, everyone you know has a Bluetooth-equipped mobile phone, most use it to talk to their PDA, and it has become as common in the notebook as the USB ports it may one day replace.

Or at least that's what we thought 2002 would be like when Ericsson first announced the marvel of Bluetooth technology in 1998. Since then, the Bluetooth ride has been more akin to extreme skiing than even a roller-coaster - any ups appear to have been overshadowed by downs. The result: many observers are measuring the technology up for its coffin.

But don't make a date in your diary yet. This technology was named after a warrior king and it intends to fight for its life.

When we were young
At first, everything seemed to be going quite smoothly. Toshiba successfully demonstrated an early prototype of a Bluetooth-enabled notebook at Comdex Fall in 1998, with two devices communicating at a distance of 10m. True, production costs were estimated at a crippling $30, the transceiver was too large and Microsoft was still conspicuous in its absence from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), but these were surely just minor blots on a bright horizon.

Unfortunately, things started to go awry in 1999. Although there were some simple telephony products - such as Ericsson's Bluetooth headset and matching phone - the first wave of IT products never materialised. At the time when finished products were allegedly meant to go on sale, late 1999, Intel was merely demonstrating wireless synchronisation between notebooks.

This whetted people's appetites for CeBIT 2000, pre-hyped to be Bluetooth's moment of triumph, but Europe's biggest IT event proved to be something of a damp squib. The closest we got to finished items were proof-of-concept devices.

Things weren't helped by Microsoft failing to integrate Bluetooth support when it released Windows XP in 2001, especially as 802.11b support was integrated, prompting some to predict the early demise of Bluetooth. Microsoft assured us that this wasn't the case, pledging continued faith in the standard and citing a lack of products as the problem. But the sum of all these troubles meant that last year, when the technology was meant to be donning its crown, it was more akin to the court jester.

Fortunately, the tide started to turn in 2002, when we finally saw a string of products rather than broken promises. An ever-increasing number of mobile phones are still being released with integrated Bluetooth, and the same goes for PDAs and notebooks. Even manufacturers like MSI and Gigabyte are flirting with the standard by integrating them into their motherboards.

It's not just IT that can benefit from Bluetooth. Companies like Ford and Chrysler have already put their money where other people's mouths are, while Audi has just had a Bluetooth headset qualified for use. After all, if you've got a Bluetooth-equipped mobile phone, all you need is a Bluetooth headset and the near-obligatory hands-free car kit is reborn.

In the world of Bluetooth, however, there's no such thing as good news all round. In late August, Conexant suspended research into the technology and stopped selling its Bluetooth-related solutions. This prompted some journalists to (again) predict the demise of Bluetooth, perhaps not realising that the company only had a tiny market share in Bluetooth solutions.

A more damaging blow came from a report by research firm Gartner, suggesting companies that invest in a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone, PDA or notebook could pay an extra $70 (£45) in support costs.