Amid continued criticism of its usefulness, total Bluetooth shipments for the first time surpassed one million units per week in the third quarter of this year, according to IMS Research's Bluetooth semiconductor tracking service.
Meanwhile, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the industry body which looks after the technology, has officially adopted a new standard that adds user-friendly features and improves connection quality.
Bluetooth has been surrounded by controversy since Ericsson created it with the aim of eliminating the wires that connect PCs, mobile phones, PDAs, computer peripherals and other devices. Critics say that despite the rapid growth in Bluetooth shipments, the technology is of limited usefulness because it is too hard to set up.
In response, the SIG launched its "Five Minute Ready" programme last December, with the goal of ensuring consumers can use Bluetooth devices within five minutes of taking them out of the box. The Bluetooth 1.2 specification, which the SIG adopted on Wednesday, includes features to speed up connection setup.
Another important improvement is the addition of adaptive frequency hopping (AFH), which is designed to reduce interference with other devices that use the same 2.4GHz wireless spectrum -- including some cordless phones and increasingly-popular Wi-Fi networks. Frequency hopping allows Bluetooth to find parts of the spectrum not being used by other devices, improving performance.
The specification also uses new error-detection methods to improve the quality of voice connections, which is important for Bluetooth headsets.
The specification is backward-compatible with all devices using Bluetooth 1.1, the most widespread version of the technology.
Silicon vendors RF Micro Devices and SiliconWave have announced a single-chip Bluetooth 1.2 circuit design called UltimateBlue, which is designed to help hardware designers implement the new technology. The chip, manufactured using the low-cost CMOS process, includes adaptive frequency hopping and other 1.2 features, and is based on a 32-bit ARM7TDMI processor.
The SIG said the first 1.2-based consumer products would begin arriving in the first quarter of 2004, with greater volumes arriving within the next 18 months.
Bluetooth everywhere
The Bluetooth SIG said shipments had been boosted by hardware makers' confidence that Bluetooth usability is improving. "With a fresh and jointly held view on the importance of usability, developers and manufacturers are feeling even more confident about Bluetooth wireless technology, and one million products a week shipping is proof of that," said Bluetooth SIG executive director Mike McCamon in a statement.
Bluetooth comes as an option on laptops including IBM's ThinkPad, Toshiba's Portege, Dell's Latitude D800 and Sony's Vaio, and is standard in Apple's G4 PowerBooks. It is also used in wireless keyboards and mice, a variety of mobile phones, handhelds including Palm's Tungsten T3 and HP's iPaq, and several models of high-end automobiles. The current 1.1 specification is used in more than 1,000 products, according to the SIG.
The SIG's core members are Agere, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia and Toshiba, with thousands of others included as associate members.
Talkback
I really wish I knew what these one million Bluetooth devices a week were... the only high profile BT devices I know of are Apple computers, a couple of PDAs and cell phones and a bunch of USB, CF and SD adapters - few of which you can actually buy at any retail store I can get to.
And when I do find them I keep going through the same exercise at the store: there's the card, there's the dongle - it's $99 together... now, if I buy it what can I do? I can sync my PDA to my computer with it. And that's it. It just doesn't seem enough.
Most BT CF and SD cards won't work in WM2003 PDAs because the manufacturers do not seem interested in providing updated drivers.
The problem isn't ease of use - it's actually fairly easy to create a connection now - it's the cost and availability.
What the BT Group has to understand is that they're replacing a $10 cable with a $150 radio. The only 'cheap' BT component so far is the USB BT Dongle - around US$30-$40, which is already more expensive than the cable it replaces - and it's only half of the solution. CF/SD cards are US$60 to US$120 (if you can get one that works with your PDA's OS).
802.11b CF cards are around the same price, but they're universally useful, and useful NOW.
What the BT groups need is a pair of $5 all-in-one chipsets with a serial and parallel interface that can be used to convert existing serial and parallel solutions into BT solutions quickly and cheaply.
Several companies did exactly this for USB and it rapidly expanded the range of devices which supported USB and allowed almost any developer to add it to their products.
When BT is cheap and ubiquitous - then it will be a success. Right now, it's nothing more than a high end toy.