17.11.2014 14:08

Just like there are WiFi/Bluetooth combo products today, capable of “talking” both WiFi and Bluetooth, there will be devices in the future that can “talk” both ZigBee and Bluetooth. Trying to pit one technology against the other does not do right to either of them, creates a standards war, and stalls the market.

The recent announcement of Bluetooth Mesh is yet another attempt of Bluetooth to get into the networking space. Over 15 years ago, Bluetooth tried to oust WiFi as a networking standard. That attempt failed miserably as WiFi has become the de-facto wireless networking standard in homes, buildings and public spaces worldwide. Now Bluetooth is giving it another try – attempting to displace ZigBee and other IEEE 802.15.4 based networking technologies like Thread, as the low power networking standard.

Will it be successful this time? Probably not, as the world will soon discover that WiFi, ZigBee and Bluetooth all have their strong areas, and that utilizing these strengths in a coordinated way can help the Internet of Things grow! But there is another lesson as well. Fighting each other will only slow down market acceptance and prevent the market from developing.

In 1998, the announcement of Bluetooth by its founding members Ericsson, Nokia, Intel and Toshiba impressed the world. Since then, Bluetooth has become a household name and the Bluetooth Alliance (Special Interest Group) now counts more than 20,000 members (2014). Most of today’s laptops and smart phones have Bluetooth. In addition, Bluetooth can be found in many peripheral devices that connect to them (headsets, keyboards, mice, sound bars, etc.). Bluetooth has also become a convenient communication method to connect a phone to a car. Today is hard to think about a world without Bluetooth.

One of the major problems of Bluetooth, its relative short battery life, has been addressed with Bluetooth Smart (Bluetooth Low Energy), enabling devices to run on smaller batteries for a longer time, thereby opening a market of wearables, from fitness bands to step-counters, as well as many (medical) devices, like wireless blood pressure and heart rate monitors. It is obvious that Bluetooth will be one of the key players of the emerging “Internet of Things”, and that the future will only encompass more and more Bluetooth devices.

However, there is a big problem. Despite this success Bluetooth is not living up to one of the most daring commitments that really impressed the world in 1998: Bluetooth will make WiFi irrelevant, or as one of the participating executives framed it: “Bluetooth will wipe WiFi from the face of the earth!” Today this statement just sounds weird and outlandish, almost laughable, but at that time, when also WiFi was just emerging, it was taken very seriously because of the big names behind it. The end result was that a standards war was ignited, that caused significant delay in market acceptance of both WiFi and Bluetooth.

Read the entire article here

www.hometoys.com