BlueCore backing for Bluetooth

By Tim Danton

Posted on 9 Sep 2002 at 16:42

One of the most influential Bluetooth companies, Cambridge Silicon Radio, gave the under-fire wireless standard a boost today, by announcing a new product that promises to attract even more phone manufacturers to the market.

The product itself is called the BlueCore2-ROM. It's a single-chip Bluetooth solution that will add the wireless standard to phones. It may not sound much, but it's the smallest solution of its kind and will allow phone manufacturers to reduce both the size and power demands of their Bluetooth-enabled phones. The bad news is that it probably won't appear in actual products until around this time next year.

Despite Gartner's recent and highly critical report on the Bluetooth market, CSR remains confident about the wireless standard's prospects. 'We're starting to see the really user-friendly applications of Bluetooth released to the market' said Glenn Collinson, CSR's marketing director. 'In the next ten years, we can imagine tens of devices in the home, or that we carry with us, all wireless enabled.'

His confidence was backed up by Matthew Towers, Managing Director of IMS Research, an independent research company specialising in the electronics industry. 'Big manufacturers are keen to integrate Bluetooth as soon as possible,' he said at the same event. 'They see it as enhancing the capabilities of their products.'