Thursday, October 05, 2006

Bluetooth set to be usurped by Wibree?

Bluetooth has long had it's critics. It was highly commendable of Ericsson to release the fruits of their research into an open standard, but there has long been a feeling that Bluetooth compromised in many areas. This is hardly surprising given that the potential applications for personal area networks weren't clear back then.

About a decade on and Nokia has come up with something more compact, less power hungry and cheaper called Wibree. They intend to have it ratified as a standard so third parties can adopt it. However, do the third parties have the appetite for another standard when they're already so committed to Bluetooth?

What we need is a killer app for Wibree that Bluetooth couldn't tackle. Then consumers can make up their minds. Been here before? Of course we have. We were surprised when SMS became the killer app of GSM. Videocalls and internet access is being touted for 3G, but take up has been slower than expected. Bluetooth is often used for headsets, but synchronisation with laptops and PDAs is hardly setting the world alight. Personally, I struggled to make it work. Wibree could find applications in more ubiquitous products such as watches, clothing and jewellery.

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

As you say ClickRich, Bluetooth could be usurped by Wibree if a killer app that Bluetooth can't tackle is found.

While I agree that this is a key success factor, I think that Nokia's licensing strategy could slow down the take up of Wibree.

I have posted more details on my blog which can be found via the following link: http://ipexecsearch.com/blog/2006/10/06/