Let us start with the first decade, by this I mean 2000 to 2010, the Triassic period of Bluetooth devices: Bluetooth was introduced in 1999 and its goal was to be a wire replacement technology. And that it achieved. The ubiquitous Bluetooth headset which took off after the government mandate for hands-free driving, wireless key pad and mice, and even Bluetooth speakers. This was the black and white decade, however, make no mistake the consumer electronics market, including PC peripherals is and will be a huge market for Bluetooth, 600M devices today and close to 1B by 2020.
We are in the Second decade, the more colorful one, the one with apps and appcessories: Accessories that exist because they can talk to your smart phone.
These devices have some common characteristics -- they are battery operated, low power operation, they are not on all the time, periodically wake-up to send data and then go back to sleep. All of this is possible only if the underlying wireless protocol/standard supports low power operation - the Bluetooth technology evolved and in 2011 Bluetooth 4.0 was introduced with a low energy specification; called Bluetooth smart or Bluetooth low energy or simply BLE in anticipation of these needs. This was designed for the IoT node devices, the appcessories market – the sensors and the beacons. The new class of devices like the toy that interacts with the story app on your phone, the Parrot flower power device that measures humidity in your flower pots and sends messages to your smart phone to alert you to water it, or the smart light bulbs with different lighting for differed moods, turns on and off the light based on when you are in the room.
Lots of neat little applications, but the investment is where the volumes are and where the profits are. 2015 was the year in which wearable technology arrived – Fitbit’s successful IPO, Pebble moving from a crowd-funded company to a legitimate smart watch company and of course the introduction of the Apple watch.
The next few years could belong to Smart and connected Homes – Googles acquisition of Nest, announcement of Thread, a wireless protocol specifically targeting the home connectivity market. With big names like Google, ARM, Freescale, Silicon Labs behind Thread, this market is gaining credibility. The Bluetooth Smart standard in its next generation plans to support long range and have mesh capabilities to address this market better, will Smart homes be the trend to tunnel through the trough of disillusionment and make it to the slope of enlightenment?
Join ARM and other industry leaders as we explore what next and what is possible at the Bluetooth World, Santa Clara. https://bluetoothworldevent.com/
It is good to see yet another article on BLE from you .