Devil's Advocate: What we can learn from Bluetooth

Looking at the example of the much-hyped Bluetooth, Martin Brampton discusses the many potential benefits of a standards-based world.

Bluetooth, which is partly responsible for mobile phone frustrations such as the ones I've experienced recently, seems presently to be an illustration of the difficulties that repeatedly crop up with standards. The pity of it is that successful standards often provide the launchpad for market success.

When the Bluetooth wireless standard was launched, it was accompanied by the inevitable hype. It was to be embedded in a vast range of devices and the cost of implementation would be close to zero. Some went so far as saying it would replace Wi-Fi. Little of that has happened and few vendors have really taken the plunge into Bluetooth enablement. It is true, though, that speed of transmission becomes a factor if really widespread use of Bluetooth is envisaged. The Bluetooth2 standard should help with this later this year.

Only now, after several years of development, are Bluetooth gadgets reaching a mass market. The original view is now acknowledged to have been too sweeping and personal applications are now the clear focus. In practice that means Bluetooth is used to link devices to mobile phones, with the most popular devices being headsets and dongles.

In principle one would have expected digital cameras and colour printers to be prime candidates for Bluetooth enablement. Unfortunately all this potential seems to be dragged down by an inadequate standards process. The basic wireless protocol is generally sound and usually devices can be paired even if they cannot then do anything.

But problems arise at the application level. So far, with all the development linked to mobile phones, the phone makers have designed their own applications with poor compliance to any standards. This is linked both to the difficulty of getting industries to agree on standards and the tendency of vendors to believe they can gain market share by selling accessories tied to their own mobiles. Nokia, in particular, seems to be acting very much like the old proprietary IBM.

The result of all this is a degree of incompatibility - so much so that some Bluetooth headsets will not even work with some mobiles from the same manufacturer. Phone shops tend to advise customers to buy a headset from the manufacturer of the phone, even though some of the most popular headsets are made by third party manufacturers.

One might have thought that BT would have some ability to influence the broader Bluetooth market but the company's Bluephone project seems to have gone very quiet. Pundits are saying that DECT is an obsolescent standard but it provides an effective solution in many situations and it is not clear there is an adequate replacement.

Added to these uncertainties are questions about usability. Pairing can be a tricky process and the software to drive Bluetooth dongles is quirky and inclined to collapse for no evident reason. One might have thought a Bluetooth headset would combine nicely with a Bluetooth-dongle-equipped PC to support VoIP but few people have achieved this.

All of these problems are anathema to the consumer market. The average buyer of a mobile phone has little interest in technical details. So much so that half of the returns of Bluetooth headsets are from people whose mobile is not Bluetooth-capable. Although the consumer experience is slowly improving, it needs to be far better and the support in the retail channel also needs to be better.

Bluetooth clearly illustrates the difficulties facing any process that seeks to establish robust standards. Vendors dither and manoeuvre to gain advantage at the expense of delaying or weakening standards. There is always the hope of market domination, a hope that often does not materialise. Meanwhile the market fails to grow because customers lack confidence in products that will not work together.

This certainly seems to be a case where a firm commitment to standards would benefit everybody. Consumers would have a far better experience and the market for devices would grow much faster. Vendors would benefit provided their products can stand competition. Yet achieving this standards-based situation frequently seems to be beyond all concerned.