Bluetooth and W-LAN, two ‘competing’ technologies for the wireless interconnection of PCs, mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), will both succeed in Europe, according to report released this week by Forrester Research.
The report –
Bluetooth And W-LAN Will Coexist – claims that the two technologies will not compete with one another, but will play different roles, arrive at different times and happily coexist. Bluetooth is an industry specification that describes how mobile phones, PCs and PDAs can easily interconnect with each other. W-LAN (wireless local area network) is a network designed to be connected to via wireless devices.
Forrester forecasts that Bluetooth will outnumber W-LAN by 10 to 1 in 2006. There will be 235 million Bluetooth-enabled devices versus 22 million W-LAN devices. However, Forrester claims that European telcos need to embrace both technologies now in order to generate more traffic and drive sales.
“Forrester sees the two technologies as more complementary than replacements for each other,” said Forrester analyst Lars Godell. “W-LAN will beat Bluetooth on reach, bandwidth, and support for PC LAN communication standards. Its strengths will make it the uncontested winner for laptops to connect to private or public networks, and it will dominate public internet access hotspots like hotels and airports. It will steadily power into laptops, reaching more than 10% next year and 72% by 2006.”
Bluetooth, claims the report, will go everywhere else, becoming the preferred choice for mobile phones, PDAs, and consumer gadgets and winning on cost, power consumption, and support for real-time applications like voice. In 2006, Bluetooth will be present in 73% of phones and 44% of PDAs and will command device-to-device connections, enabling communication between phones, printers, PDAs and scanners in the office and between phones, home control units, TVs and VCRs in the home.
Bluetooth’s inclusion in new mobile phones and consumer gadgets will deliver faster growth, beginning as early as next year. It will flood into mainstream mobiles in 2003 when chip prices fall to just $5. W-LAN, on the other hand, can expect slower growth as laptops – which will have the system built-in – ship at a much lower volume and rate than mobile phones.
