Bluetooth hits 1 million a week

[btooth]

Bluetooth hits 1 million a week
Friday, October 31 2003
by Matthew Clark

One million Bluetooth-enabled units are shipping every week, according to the group responsible for the technology. Latest ENN headlines

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), an organisation that promotes the technology and ensures interoperability, said that the newest figures from IMS Research show that milestone was reached in the third quarter of 2003.

Bluetooth is a protocol that allows devices like mobile phones and laptops to send data to other devices, without wires, over distances of about 30 feet. Introduced as a replacement for cables in 1998, Bluetooth has been slow to gain mass-market penetration, with interoperability and interference problems blamed as the main culprits.

Even now, the Bluetooth SIG acknowledges that the one million a week milestone will come as a surprise to the general consumer audience, which is still largely unaware of the technology. "That is expected to change even as soon as this holiday season," the group said, adding that the increased awareness will come from the now expanded array of devices that the technology has been loaded into. These range from the standards like mobile phones, headsets, PDAs and laptops, to MP3 players and even cars.


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