OXFORD, United Kingdom—With Bluetooth chipset manufacturers forecasting shipments of more than 90 million devices this year, the technology looks, eventually, like it is coming of age. The announcement last week by Apple to support the short-range wireless technology brings fresh impetus to Bluetooth after a bad 2001, when delays and market confusion raised questions about its future.
However, as cell phone, personal digital assistant (PDA) and consumer electronics manufacturers plan to integrate Bluetooth into their products, a working group within the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (BSIG) is already working to establish the next revision, labeled 1.2. Insiders claim that a higher speed version of Bluetooth is being actively considered to support “VHS-quality” wireless video streaming together with improvements to the radio performance and power consumption.
This talk of a new revision, which should be ratified later this year, is unsettling some manufacturers wanting to see the existing 1.1 revision have a longer life to enable them to achieve some return on their extensive investment. One Bluetooth chip development firm, Silicon Wave, claimed that it will have devices capable of supporting revision 1.2 by early next year.
