WiFi Overtaking Bluetooth In Mobile Phones?

0

Written on Wednesday, September 02, 2009

This morning I came across a very interesting article online, reporting on the global expected shipments of WiFi-enabled mobile phones over the following couple of years.


I am giving you the whole article below because it is very well written and makes an interesting read (and also in case you can't be bothered to click one more time):
Global shipments of Wi-Fi-enabled cell phones are expected to double between 2009 and 2011, at least partially due to the emergence of a slew of smartphones with Wi-Fi capabilities, according to an analyst at ABI Research in New York.

Analyst Michael Morgan said he expects about 300 million handsets that provide dual wireless capability for cellular and Wi-Fi to ship during 2011, up from about 144 million expected to ship this year.

Morgan added that he expects about 85 million Wi-Fi-capable smartphones to ship globally this year -- of 170 million total smartphones. The Wi-Fi-capable smartphones include Apple Inc.'s iPhone and other popular offerings. Morgan noted that the number of smartphones shipped is expected to grow by about 20% each year for the next several years, and predicted that fully 90% will have Wi-Fi capability by 2014.

"A doubling of Wi-Fi enabled cell phones in two years is ridiculously high," Morgan said. "Wi-Fi has become a must-have item much as Bluetooth did earlier."

Part of the value of having a Wi-Fi handset these day is that the number of hot spots in coffee shops and other buildings is exploding while more and more homes and even planes support the technology, he noted. Eight U.S. Airlines now offer Wi-Fi access on more than 500 flights, with the number expected to grow to entire carrier fleets in two years.

Following AT&T's lead, Verizon Wireless recently made 30,000 Boingo Wireless Wi-Fi hot spots available to some 9 million of its residential customers on certain plans.

Morgan said Verizon is "warming up to Wi-Fi" and can be expected to support more smartphones and handsets with dual mode capability for Wi-Fi. Even AT&T was at first leery of Wi-Fi, fearing it would take traffic off from their cellular networks, Morgan said. But AT&T was "thrown into the [Wi-Fi] pool by the iPhone" after it first surfaced two years ago, he added.

The issue arising from above is, obviously, whether Bluetooth should feel 'threatened' by this rise in WiFi-enabled mobile phones, and, should that be the case: how long does Bluetooth have to live?

My view on the subject -- and this is a view I have also posted previously -- is that Bluetooth and WiFi are not just two different communication mediums, but different approaches to mobile marketing altogether!

WiFi offers little contextual information (Bluetooth offers this), but offers much better connectivity(where Bluetooth is considerably weaker).

If each is used for a purpose suiting its strong points, and both used so that they complement each other, I think we would have on our hands a much more complete proximity marketing medium.

I am, therefore, looking forward to this change, and hope we, as mobile marketers, will realise the potential opening up before us and take advantage.


If you enjoyed this post Subscribe to our feed

No Comment

Post a Comment