Yesterday in this blog, I wrote about the differences and similarities between established wireless standard Bluetooth and new-kid-on-the-block Wibree. Talk about good timing—guess what landed in my mailbox today? A report from ABI Research regarding the future of, you guessed it, Wibree.
Specifically, ABI is predicting that the market for Wibree products could be worth $513 million by 2011—if certain things happen.
ABI lists several key “ifs” that are required for Wibree to grow as predicted. There include:
-
Nokia forces Wibree into handsets at the earliest opportunity
-
Sillicon vendors bring dual-mode ICs to market at prices close to those of Bluetooth ICs today
-
Ratio of dual-mode to standalone devices grows rapidly after market seeding
-
Bluetooth SIG adopts the Wibree standard
-
Widespread adoption of Wibree by handset vendors
In the report, ABI analyst Stuart Carlaw says: “While some industry observers are skeptical about the prospects for Wibree, we believe it is a unique technology that can leverage the very positive market position of Bluetooth in segments such as medical and sports equipment, where the total available market is extremely large and still relatively untouched.”
But, Carlaw cautioned, if Bluetooth SIG thumbs its nose at Wibree, and if handset vendors pass on adopting the new technology, the Wibree market in 2011 will be worth almost nothing.
"These two factors go hand in hand to some degree, and positive noises emanating from both the Bluetooth SIG and Wibree communities provide support for a favorable market forecast,” Carlaw said.
The main advantage of Wibree seems to be its low power consumption. It seems to me that, given this fact, if bandwidth capabilities of the technologies are boosted to the levels of Bluetooth today, the new kid soon will become king.
What do you think?
Technorati
Del.icio.us
Slashdot
Digg
I think it's a very good point... but I don't think it's going to well for the new technology already. This was posted in November 2006, it's now August 2007 and this is the first time I've ever heard of Wibree. So, I still need to do some active research, but are the advantages hypothetical or real? That's the issue. The fact that I haven't heard anything about Wibree yet makes me skeptical as to whether the advantages claimed were real or not...
Based on your article, it seems that the only significant advantage of this Wibree is its low power consumption. I’m particularly doubtful about the rest that you mentioned. Any update about this Wibree lately?