The Hindu Business Line : Bluetooth devices 'to ride high on mobile boom'

THE mobile telephony boom currently witnessed in India will drive the usage of Bluetooth devices in the country, said Mr Eric Schneider, Marketing Director, Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) Inc.

Bluetooth is the low-power, short-range radio technology that allows the exchange of information between electronic devices such as mobile phones, headsets, PDAs, notebook PCs and even automobiles without wires.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is a trade association comprising major companies in the telecommunications, computing, automotive, industrial automation and network industries. The group promotes the development of Bluetooth wireless technology and helps bring the devices to the market.

Mr Schneider said India was several years behind in the adoption of the Bluetooth devices compared to Europe, the US, China, Japan and Taiwan. "However, with the current boom in the mobile telephony segment in India, and with a technically savvy youth population who enjoy wireless communication, we only see a continued increase in the demand for Bluetooth environments," he said.

India is among the fastest growing mobile telephony markets in the world, adding almost two million subscribers a month. Almost all the major handset vendors have already introduced Bluetooth-enabled devices in India, Mr Schneider said. "As the awareness increases, the adoption of Bluetooth devices would also see a rise."

Mr Schneider said there are currently about 2,600 qualified Bluetooth products globally. "The installed base of these different products, which stood at 250 million is set to double to around 500 million by the end of 2005," he said. Over six million such devices are shipped worldwide on a weekly basis.

Mr Schneider was in India to meet the members of Bluetooth SIG and attend the first Bluetooth member qualification-training seminar. The seminar was in response to the increasing number of Bluetooth-enabled products developed and qualified in India for internal and export sales. There are about 134 companies in India focussed on developing Bluetooth products, he said.

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