Mobile boom to drive Bluetooth device usage

By agencies   |   Tuesday, 29 November 2005, 20:30 IST
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BANGALORE: The mobile telephony boom currently witnessed in India will drive the usage of Bluetooth devices in the country, Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) Inc’s Marketing Director, Eric Schneider said. It 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. In case of Bluetooth adoption, India was several years behind compared to Europe, the U.S., China, Japan and Taiwan. “However, with the current boom in the mobile telephony segment in India, and with a technology savvy youths who enjoy wireless communication, we are expecting the demand to go up tremendously,” he said. The country is among the fastest growing mobile telephony markets in the world, adding about two million subscribers in a month. Almost all the major handset vendors have introduced Bluetooth-enabled devices in India, Schneider said. Currently about 2,600 qualified Bluetooth products are available 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. On a weekly basis, over six million such devices are shipped worldwide. 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.