Bluetooth Optimism

Market researcher Allied Business Intelligence (ABI) predicts that sales of Bluetooth chipsets will jump from 11.2 million units in 2001 to a whopping 1.1 billion in 2007, as Graph 1 shows. ABI sees several reasons for optimism. First, the price of Bluetooth chipsets fell in 2002 even though sales volume didn't reach mass-market levels. Second, the Bluetooth 1.1 specification has stabilized and offers an acceptable degree of interoperability. As a result, ABI believes that Bluetooth functionality will be a standard item on second-and-a-half-generation and third-generation cell phones by the end of 2003. Competition among Bluetooth suppliers should lead to communications solutions that integrate Bluetooth with radio frequency (RF) and IP, eliminating the need for a separate Bluetooth channel.

—Elliot King