Bluetooth Going Ultra Wide, Gruesome Death Staved Off For Another Day
from the it's-all-evolution dept
We’ve been joking about analysts who like to kill off Bluetooth in favor of non-existent technology for years. For some unclear reason, everyone loves to pile on and claim that Bluetooth is dead and going to be replaced by some non-existent technology. Just a couple of days ago, yet another person chimed in with a story about Bluetooth being past its prime. However, all of these stories seem to do two things: (1) Ignore the rapid growth in Bluetooth over the last year or so and (2) set up a straw man argument using other technologies that haven’t even been standardized, let alone reached the market (while at the same time, insisting that the existing, already-on-the-market technology will never evolve itself by the time the new technology reaches the marketplace). Of course, one of the most popular such “Bluetooth killing” technologies is ultrawideband (UWB) — a technology that should have been standardized a year and a half ago, but thanks to a ridiculous stalemate, has mostly gone nowhere. That stalemate may finally be seeing something that looks like a light at the end of the tunnel, but the folks involved with Bluetooth haven’t freaked out. Instead, they’ve now aligned themselves with UWB, so that future versions of Bluetooth will be compatible with UWB, allowing the technologies to evolve together onto a single path — rather than fight to kill each other off. Once again, it appears the reports of Bluetooth’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
