re: Nokia on Bluetooth
Interview with Jukka Lintusaari, Director of Bluetooth Solutions in Nokia Venture's new growth business organisation.
>> Venturing Forth
Bluetooth World
Issue 6
01 June 2002
The most successful cellphone manufacturer in the world has been accused of being less than open about its perspectives and ambitions for the role of Bluetooth. As Nokia Venture belatedly introduces the technology within high-end mobile phones, Jukka Lintusaari, director of Bluetooth solutions in Nokia Venture's new growth business organisation, outlines its plans, hopes and fears for Bluetooth's future
What is Nokia's marketing strategy for Bluetooth?
A. Unofficially, within Nokia we have grouped together market areas where Bluetooth could be used. There are three different segments:
- First, cable replacement, which within the cellphone business allows many devices to be connected to the mobile phone, PDA or PC.
- Secondly, ad hoc networking, where people and their interests are connected together, perhaps people sharing resources within a meeting room for example.
- Thirdly, local content or services that can be connected to the network using Bluetooth, which is not an alternative access method but more a totally new group of services, for example a local weather service for where you are at that particular time. Bluetooth could be an excellent enabler for this type of service.
Bluetooth is now well represented within Nokia products with more and more of our terminals including the technology. But, it's not yet in all products and we're looking at what the business drivers are before including it within a particular range.
Today, Bluetooth is still very much aimed at cable replacement, but this is only the first wave of products, and cable replacement will be one of many areas where we will see Bluetooth being used.
Also, the recent announcement concerning the sale of our compact flash business to Socket was very straightforward. We have been involved with Bluetooth for many years, and for a big company we had an interest and responsibility to make sure it is successful. But there were areas that had become mature, so we took the decision to move more towards our core business, and Nokia is not a long-term developer of compact flash cards.
There are other companies better at this development than ourselves, but our involvement was needed in the early days.
How are the cellphone operators reacting to Bluetooth?
A. Some within the cellphone operator community believe Bluetooth is a real threat to their businesses. They point to it being a new technology where the business case is unclear, and investment is required without understanding what the return might be.
Part of this hesitation by some operators is that, in the last three to four years, there have been many promises made regarding new technology that have resulted in disappointment - albeit not always due to the technology, but sometimes misunderstanding the business case. This happened with WAP and to some degree GPRS. Maybe the telecoms industry has not been so good at marketing these new developments in a simple and effective manner.
Others operators take a more positive viewpoint, believing that new types of local service groups could be built and combined with the existing cellular business models. However, I believe these services will start with or without mobile operators. For example, some of our competitors have launched Bluetooth-enabled cameras, and more products such as these will quickly appear.
But quite how operators will benefit from Bluetooth remains to be seen.
If the business case is strong enough, and the technology is combined with GSM, GPRS and UMTS, operators could see service revenues boosted, plus the addition of local Bluetooth-based services.
Are you happy with the BSIG's methodology for developing specification?
A. One of the areas the telecoms industry has organised very successfully is product release management - a process that must be adopted by the Bluetooth SIG. Where some products are on 1.1 while others are on 1.2, it needs to be absolutely clear to the user where products will work together, and where they won't. Nobody should be confused. From my experiences with GSM and UMTS, interoperability is absolutely key and without this the consumer can become very bewildered.
The next development of Bluetooth is crucial to its breakthrough, but for now the BSIG and all the manufacturers need to be determined to ensure that the existing 1.1 specification is stable enough so any developer can build Bluetooth products with confidence.
People within the BSIG are talking about future radio specifications - will the spec include high or low rate data speeds etc? These discussions need to be agreed this year, with any transition to a new revision of Bluetooth being an assured success story. The BSIG must agree upon a radio evolution and when and how it should be released.
The BSIG has focused on what it needs to achieve rather than talking with other wireless industry bodies. This was probably because Bluetooth's initial role was seen as a cable replacement technology.
But if a Bluetooth radio is positioned as one of the access methods within cellular, discussions will be needed with 3GPP, ETSI and other cellular organisations.
In recognition of this, and to ensure wider usage, the BSIG looks like it has accepted that it cannot standardise everything and it is now starting to talk to other industry bodies. A good example is the WAP Forum where discussion have focused on how to standardise WAP over Bluetooth, and whether to use the LAN or PAN profile.
What Challenges Does Bluetooth Face Over The Next 12 Months?
A. The next big hurdle for Bluetooth, but it's not 'Mission Impossible', is how to evolve from where the technology is today to being IP-based.
This raises the questions of how the profiles should be migrated and which are important.
In general, we support IP evolution, including IPv6, which is very valid for Bluetooth. The question is how to make the transition, which has not been answered very well by the working group. Bluetooth started from an application-specific profile viewpoint, and, as part of the PAN profile working group.
Nokia is working in-house to better understand the issues while recognising that we need to adopt and accept how other organisations are working and recognise their standards.
But, ad hoc Bluetooth networking is perhaps one of the most difficult areas.
What is needed is the involvement of many other standardisation bodies - for example, how security and billing would operate, together with content and authentication mechanisms. But the opportunity ad hoc networking offers is perhaps one of the most interesting for Bluetooth.
With regard to how the PAN profile is standardised - if it's done well, then there will be an explosion of applications that can use Bluetooth.
With the PAN profile comes service discovery, but there is a question mark as to how the right devices will find each other. This has been a hot discussion point within the BSIG and there are many different concepts under discussion.
What does the future hold for Bluetooth?
A. It looks increasingly likely that Bluetooth will be widely used. But, over the next two years it will be interesting to see where the millions of Bluetooth chips are used most, and for what applications.
Bluetooth is perhaps unique in being the only wireless technology that has been developed where there is a strong link between the application and the radio. WLAN and cellular radios, and other lower level technologies, are standardised separately from the applications. The 1.1 specification is good today, but any new revision of Bluetooth that is not finalised correctly will be a problem, and the BSIG must establish a comprehensive release management system to ensure success. For example, a solid statement is needed regarding the backward compatibility for 1.2 when used with 1.1. But the last five per cent of the work on any standard is always the most crucial, and this holds true for Bluetooth. With GSM there are still several thousand people working on standardisation after the product has been around for over ten years.
Bluetooth also needs a more detailed roadmap to better understand how it might be used in the future with IPv6, network services etc, and how this will be communicated to those working outside the Bluetooth industry.
There also needs to be a good dialogue, starting now, with the developers of complementary technologies. The BSIG must be networking with other organisations about what it should do regarding security, authentication and discovery protocol.
Overall, the business drivers need to be stronger than the technical drivers.<<
- Eric - |
