Lounging in bed on a recent Saturday morning, David Bolan, an executive with a Silicon Valley start-up, lifted his thumb from the remote control and caught his first glimpse of his livelihood on the screen.
There, a reseller was hawking 6,000 IBM notebook computers left over from a crashed-and-burned company. The flameout must have been recent; the machines featured a new wireless technology called Bluetooth, for which Bolan's company, Pico Communications of Cupertino, California, designed networking products. Although the program conveyed a grim message about the high-technology meltdown, Bolan was thrilled when the announcer proclaimed Bluetooth the coming wave of unplugged communications.
"This is awesome," Bolan, vice president for business development at Pico, recalled thinking. "The consumer is finally starting to be educated about Bluetooth."
PHOTO: NY TIMES
Last year was supposed to be the breakout year for Bluetooth technology, which carries information on radio waves among mobile phones, personal computers and other devices equipped with a Bluetooth chip. A fleet of products -- from cordless phone headsets to PC adapter kits -- were to have begun their cascade into the US market.
Alluring vision
The vision was alluring: Cell phones and computers could synchronize their contact lists as soon as they were within 30 feet, hand-held computers could send documents through the air to a nearby printer, and laptops could surf the Web using a phone's cellular network. In several years, supporters argued, every electronic device or appliance -- from computers to microwave ovens -- would use a Bluetooth chip to talk automatically with other devices.
Bluetooth supporters said chips would soon cost less than US$5 and run on little power, allowing device makers to build the chips into each cell phone or hand-held device without worrying about battery drain.
Encouraged by some of the world's largest electronics manufacturers, analysts estimated that nearly 1.5 billion Bluetooth-ready devices would be sold by 2005, creating vast communications networks between devices and appliances. But the cascade turned out to be a trickle -- Bluetooth was still not ready for mass production. Chip costs remained high, and devices sometimes refused to talk with each other. A handful of products began appearing on the market last September but in small numbers and at high prices. These were normal growing pains for a young technology, but two years of boasting brought publicity to its troubles.
Industry leaders say that with a new set of technical specifications and a more stable platform, Bluetooth is finally ready to pick up speed later this year, and take off next year. Motorola, Ericsson, 3Com, Compaq, Toshiba and others have early Bluetooth products, including phone and PC adapters, on the market, with plans to increase distribution later this year, and Palm will offer a Bluetooth expansion card for its m500 series of hand-helds units by the end of the year.
"We are going to drive it to become ubiquitous," said Michael Mace, chief competitive officer and vice president for product planning for Palm, which wants to enable its devices to communicate wirelessly with PCs, phones and other machines.
But while engineers fine-tune Bluetooth and major manufacturers declare its rise is imminent, troubles have emerged. First, with the souring of the economy, corporations -- usually the first to adopt new technologies -- have cut budgets. Second, sales of hand-helds and cellular phones, expected to be market drivers for Bluetooth, have plunged. And last, another wireless technology, originally expected to complement Bluetooth, came in and stole much of its thunder.
The other wireless networking standard, IEEE 802.11b, or Wi-Fi, has picked up strong momentum among information technology managers and technology savvy consumers. Wi-Fi networks allow computer users to connect to the Internet wirelessly from Starbuck's coffee bars, as well as from some shops, airport and hotel lounges and corporate offices and college campuses.
Supporters of both technologies say there is room for both in the marketplace. But if Wi-Fi succeeds in adopting Bluetooth's most attractive attributes -- low power consumption and cost -- it could be used in a wide range of small devices, which could then use the Internet to communicate with each other. This script, some observers predict, could render Bluetooth a well-planned, heavily financed failure.
Solution found
The development of Bluetooth goes back to 1994, when researchers in Ericsson's labs began work on a way to make hands-free cell phone calls without using cables. They found their solution in radio waves. Unlike infrared, which enlivens television remote controls and allows users of hand-held computers to beam their business cards to one another, radio waves can travel through walls and in many directions at once, up to about 10m. They used little power -- a crucial feature for devices that run on batteries. And, at least in theory, the radio chips could be made small and inexpensive, so they could be built into every phone.
In 1998, Ericsson assembled a special-interest group to begin developing this technology for the general market. The first members were the cell phone maker Nokia, the computer manufacturers IBM and Toshiba, and the chip maker Intel. Jim Kardach, an Intel technician and amateur historian, dubbed the wireless standard "Bluetooth," after Harald Bluetooth, a Scandinavian king who unified Denmark and Norway in the 10th century. The imagery was simple: The technology would bring together devices just like King Bluetooth united the two countries.
Joined by other technology leaders like Microsoft, Compaq Computer and Lucent Technologies, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group -- which now numbers 2,500 companies -- began suggesting that Bluetooth was the wireless technology that futurists awaited. In the beginning, they envisioned Bluetooth replacing cables to carry information not just within, but between devices, creating so-called personal-area networks unencumbered by wires.
In this Bluetooth-enabled future, proponents say, travelers will walk into airports and be instantly recognized by their devices. The airline's computer system will send, via radio waves, the passenger's boarding pass, departure gate and flight status directly to the hand-held or cell phone. On the road, a car with a broken fan belt can diagnose its troubles and contact a repairman through the network.
"We're banking on the consumer marketplace to win with Bluetooth," said Francis Dance, telematics services project manager for BMW of North America.
For that to happen, Bluetooth chips need others to talk with. But the price of chip sets has not declined nearly as fast as expected.
Mace, the Palm executive, said his company would begin placing a Bluetooth chip set inside every hand-held when chip sets costs less than US$10, about half their price today. In the meantime, Palm and other manufacturers are relying on kits that add Bluetooth to existing devices. The kits can cost US$200 per device, an expensive price to eliminate cables.
Surprising emergence
As Bluetooth struggles toward widespread release, Wi-Fi has enjoyed a surprising emergence into the mainstream. Wi-Fi is a wireless local area network; instead of linking devices through an ad hoc connection of radio waves like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi connects devices directly to an established Internet network. While Bluetooth sends and receives information at speeds similar to a dial-up modem, Wi-Fi is closer to a high-speed cable modem or digital subscriber line. Wi-Fi also has a much wider range, up to 100m, compared to 10m for Bluetooth.
The tradeoff for the faster transmission rates is that Wi-Fi uses much more power than Bluetooth. The largest manufacturers support both technologies, envisioning a market in which Bluetooth connects small, battery-powered devices like phones and handhelds, while Wi-Fi connects laptops to the Internet.
Compaq and other companies have designed modules that contain both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, allowing notebook users to construct their network based on their needs. "This isn't Betamax versus VHS, where one of them is going to win and one's going to lose," said Steven Andler, vice president of marketing in the computer systems group of Toshiba America Information Systems.
Many industry observers, however, believe that Wi-Fi could cut the legs out from under Bluetooth before it can reach critical mass. In last week's edition of
Microsoft, a backer of both technologies, dealt a blow to Bluetooth's image in April when it said its new desktop operating system, Windows XP, would initially support Wi-Fi, but not Bluetooth. Microsoft said it would wait to include software support for developers until it saw production-ready Bluetooth products.
That tack was echoed elsewhere. "The last thing we want to do is take a new technology to market before it's mature, and get a huge black eye," said Randy Roberts, director of digital convergence for Nokia, which has released only one Bluetooth product, in Europe.
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