Microsoft Won't Bother With Bluetooth

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

April 02, 2001 (8:23 AM EDT)

By Will Wade,

ANAHEIM, Calif.—Microsoft Corp. will not support Bluetooth in the next major version of Windows, executives said, portraying the technology as not ready for prime time.

Nor will Windows XP, a version of the operating system aimed broadly at consumer and business users, adopt the emerging HomeRF wireless local-area network standard. XP instead will use 802.11, which company managers see as taking off rapidly.

"I don't think the maturity of Bluetooth technology is good enough to ship the bits when Windows XP is released," said Carl Stork, general manager of Microsoft's Windows division, speaking in an interview at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) here. "We wouldn't want to ship something that doesn't work, and Bluetooth doesn't yet meet a certain quality level."

The lack of native Bluetooth support in Windows won't prevent PC, notebook, and handheld-device makers from building Bluetooth-capable systems. But it will add complexity to the process and could open the door to a greater diversity of implementations. That, in turn, conjures the prospect of product incompatibility.

The news from Microsoft (stock: MSFT) comes on the heels of a highly publicized flop at the recent CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany, when 100 Bluetooth transmitters equipped with the short-range radio technology failed to transform a convention hall into a wireless data network for visitors with palmtop computers.

The difficulty in what was billed as the largest demo of Bluetooth to date appeared to stem from the use of different versions of protocols and the high concentration of devices seeking access to one network.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group rolled out a revised version 1.1 of the specification in early March.

"We were trying to give the public a demonstration using a technology in its infancy, with most [modules] at the prototype stage. That took guts," said Yuval Ben Ze'ev, chief executive officer of Brightcom Technologies Ltd., Rosh Haayin, Israel, a Bluetooth chip and software developer.

With a range of about 10 meters and speeds limited to roughly 1 Mbit/s, Bluetooth initially is designed as a replacement for the rat's nest of cables that are used to connect handheld computers, PCs, and cellular phones.

"Even if [version] 1.1 solves current issues, it's pretty much immediately obvious Bluetooth is being stretched in ways not envisaged," said Paul Hollingworth, European marketing director for Altera Corp., San Jose, Calif.

Very few Bluetooth devices are actually ready for deployment and the format still seems to have some bugs in it, Microsoft's Stork said. "It looks like Bluetooth is not ready for prime time."

Lack of Windows support may not substantially harm the eventual rollout of Bluetooth, said Steve Andler, vice president of marketing for Toshiba America Information Systems, one of the largest notebook computer makers.

"Microsoft's decision is unfortunate, but it won't change anything," Andler said.

"It will require more resources for us to do our own software driver stacks, but we were going to do this anyway" for other operating systems.

Tassos Markas, director of multimedia at Atmel Corp., San Jose, which makes Bluetooth silicon, agreed. "We develop our own software stacks [for Bluetooth] and work with customers who do as well," Markas said. "We've been very successful in the past with 802.11 without direct support from Windows."

»More from EE Times