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Bluetooth - All Your Base Are Belong To Us!
June 13, 2007
(I stuck a short glossary at the end of this post as I realised I got a little abbreviation-happy!)
You're bored listening to it, and I'm bored saying it (well, not really), but Bluetooth is on a roll. Market-wise, it's never seen so many units going out the door per week (15M per week now, or higher).
And standards-wise, the Bluetooth SIG's strategy of co-opetition (or whatever buzzphrase you're having this week) is working.
The latest to lay down and be absorbed: WiBbree - the short-lived super-low-power alternative from Nokia, has now graciously decided to throw its lot in with Bluetooth.
So now we have:
- UWB: rolled in under Bluetooth for high bandwidth applications (HD Media Streaming around the home anyone?)
- NFC: the tap-n-go instant transfer spec that's now an optional part of Bluetooth 2.1+EDR specification
- WiBree : ultra low power scenarios, such as true bluetooth buttons, watches or industrial sensors (watch out Zigbee)
Pretty impressive. Bluetooth now goes from higher bandwidth usage scenarios where it can stream HD DVDs from a DVD player wirelessly to a HD flat panel TV, down to very low power and NFC-style apps for personal and industrial apps.
Kudos to the SIG and Mike Foley for pursuing the strategy so well and with such focus. It's working, and I think consumers will benefit over the next few years, with a range of products that will continue to be branded as "Bluetooth", and will hopefully achieve Mac-like nirvana and "just work".
See Bluetooth 2.1+EDR in action here.
In a later post I'll outline some of the potential for extending JSR82 to cover some of the new mouth-watering functionality contained in these absorbed standards. One of the great things though is that JSR82 will continue to "just work" with these right now, as they appear in deployed products. Cool.
Glossary:
[UWB = Ultra Wide Band]
[NFC = Near Field Communication]
[ZigBee = Alternative low-power short range communication standard]
[SIG = shorthand for the Bluetooth Special Interest Group]
[HD DVDs = High Definition DVDs or TVs]
[Bluetooth 2.1+EDR = latest version of the Bluetooth Specification ; EDR stands for Enhanced Data Rate]
[JSR82 - the world's only and best standard Java APIs for Bluetooth]
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