Nokia low power Wibree may make Bluetooth obsolete

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 03 October 2006 23:30

IT Industry - Strategy

Nokia has unveiled a new low power radio wireless technology for use in short range applications similar to Bluetooth but requiring dramatically less power.

• Announcements

With Nokia's new Wibree technology, devices can be linked up to 10 meters apart using about one tenth the power of Bluetooth.

The much lower power requirements of Wibree will enable it to be used in much smaller and energy efficent devices, such as wrist watches, as well as current Bluetooth applications, such as wireless keyboards and mice.

While Wibree can operate in conjunction with existing Bluetooth networks, it uses a different frequency band - 2.4 gigahertz as opposed to 6 gigaherz - and its order of magnitude lower power requirements are already raising questions as to whether it will make Bluetooth obsolete.