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 A Closer Look Bluetooth Slow to Catch On
Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 11, 2003; Page F07
The wireless technology called Bluetooth once created buzz about how the standard, designed to let gadgets communicate with one another, would upend the consumer-tech world. But years after getting billed as the Next Big Thing at industry conferences and conventions, the technology is unknown to most people. In the Bluetooth world, data -- calendar entries, contacts, notes, whatever -- flow automatically between your Bluetooth-enabled computer, cell phone and handheld organizer whenever they get within 30 feet of one another. All those devices would include the technology because the necessary computer chips would be cheap and compact enough for manufacturers to put them in their products without a second thought. But Bluetooth has not fulfilled the early forecasts. In 1999, the research firm In-Stat/MDR predicted that 260 million Bluetooth chips would be sold in 2003. It now predicts 95 million. "The chip set is still on the larger side from what vendors would want, and it's still too expensive," said Alex Slawsby, an analyst at IDC -- which once predicted that Bluetooth would be ubiquitous in laptops by the end of 2001. With chips costing $5 to $10, he said, manufacturers are reluctant to embrace Bluetooth, especially when consumers don't seem to care. It's not that people are afraid of investing in a novel wireless technology. They've done so in huge numbers for a different kind -- WiFi, which costs more than Bluetooth but transmits data much faster and farther. WiFi retail sales grew 242 percent last year to $283 million, according to NPD Group. Bluetooth backers expected to see adoption in the United States start with cell phones, because people tend to replace their cell phones more often than their computers. But business has been slow in that market. Nokia, the leading cell-phone manufacturer worldwide, makes eight Bluetooth-enabled phones among more than 30 models. Motorola, the No. 2 manufacturer, doesn't make any, although it plans to introduce some later this year. The numbers are even smaller in the handheld-organizer and printer markets, and computer manufacturers haven't pushed Bluetooth either. Dell made WiFi standard equipment on some of its laptops, but has not done so with Bluetooth, nor has it seen much demand for it. Although most of Dell's laptops can be upgraded to support Bluetooth for $49, few U.S. customers have done so. Michael McCamon, executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, an industry trade group, said adoption of the standard is starting to happen. "It's just been a little bit slower than any of us expected," he said. Bluetooth may be getting less attention than WiFi these days, but McCamon said both technologies have roles to play. "Bluetooth is a Swiss Army knife," McCamon said. "WiFi is a steak knife -- it does one thing really well, where our value is our versatility." That versatility can cut both ways. While it's easy to understand the promise of WiFi -- surf the Web from your back porch! -- Bluetooth can be tougher to sell because its benefits sometimes seem so abstract or far-fetched. At a Bluetooth conference last year, for example, Toshiba showed prototypes of a Bluetooth-equipped washing machine, refrigerator and microwave oven, all connected to a home terminal to ease such tasks as downloading recipes. Other emerging applications are more straightforward. Some automakers will add Bluetooth to upcoming models. Your Bluetooth phone could use your car stereo as its speakerphone for hands-free conversations. Meanwhile, Bluetooth backers say they're going to lay off the hype. "You can't let expectations get ahead of reality because you will pay," McCamon said. "And we did."
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