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Sony Claims to have a 'Feel' for Bluetooth

By Junko Yoshida, EE Times

Making Bluetooth technology easier for consumers to use quickly emerged as a key issue at this year's low-key Bluetooth World Congress. Resolving the ease-of-use issue would address designers concerns about consumers being scared away from the wireless technology.

The Bluetooth community is struggling to find a way to ensure that consumers can quickly set up Bluetooth connectivity that currently takes hours in some cases. The goal is to get Bluetooth-enabled devices up and running within five minutes of taking them out of the box.

A Sony Corp. unit said it has the answer, but others said they remain skeptical

Maria Khorsand, president of Ericsson Technology Licensing, in her keynote speech, called consumer acceptance of Bluetooth "one of the most critical issues we need to debate this year in our industry."

Nonetheless, with close to 30 million Bluetooth devices shipped last year - roughly twice the shipments of WLAN chips - the Bluetooth community remains bullish, predicting shipments of 70 to 120 million Bluetooth devices this year. Some speakers here declared that Bluetooth is finally becoming a mature, commodity product.

Still, the harsh reality for Bluetooth proponents is, "Many units might have been shipped, but Bluetooth is not actually utilized by consumers," said Per Forsberg, general manager of wireless systems at National Semiconductors. "I don't think Bluetooth has won this race yet."

In an ambitious attempt to address the usability issue, Masanobu Yoshida, president of the handheld computer company at Sony Corp., unveiled a proprietary Bluetooth application technology called "Feel," which is designed to provide instant connectivity among Sony's own Bluetooth devices.

Yoshida bemoaned the negative "out-of-box" consumer Bluetooth experience, in which buyers typically spend several hours slogging through a menu, pairing Bluetooth devices and setting up rules before they can start connecting devices. Sony's Feel technology, although still under development, can bring "instant connection - one step, one second" to Bluetooth devices, Yoshida said.

In a series of demonstrations here, Sony showed that simply by waving a Sony Bluetooth-enabled device, such as a digital still camera, PDA or mobile phone, at a Sony notebook computer, the computer quickly recognizes the Bluetooth-enabled device, opens its icon and starts transferring an image.

Yoshida said the technology demonstration used the Bluetooth-specified basic image profile for image file transfer, while depending on the Bluetooth standard's compliant radio and media access controller chips. According to Yoshida, Feel technology includes "a whole new middleware and applications" that must go inside Bluetooth-capable appliances to enable instant connectivity.

Although Feel is Sony's proprietary technology, Yoshida said the company is willing to license it for a fee.

In a separate keynote speech, John Hodgson, CEO at CSR, said his company is working with Sony on the Bluetooth instant connectivity project. "We will be ready for products next year," Hodgson said. When asked about the partnership with Sony and the technology CSR is providing, Hodgson declined to comment, saying only, "This is all about software."

Not everyone in the Bluetooth community is moving to embrace Sony's proprietary software. Unanswered questions include issues about interoperability and licensing. It also remains unclear how such an instant connectivity feature could be achieved in non-Sony devices.

"As long as the technology remains proprietary, chances of its success are zero," said Paul Marino, general manager of business line connnectivity at Philips Semiconductors.

Joyce Putscher, director, converging markets and technologies for at In-Stat/MDR, also said she doubted whether other consumer electronics manufacturers would be willing to pay Sony an additional licensing fee for Feel connectivity on top of other Bluetooth implementation costs.

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