Bluetooth, the much maligned personal are network technology is not as much of a laggard as you might have thought. It is a fast growing business, and is providing some hope for the chipmakers and cellphone companies that have placed their bets on the technology named after a viking king. Click here to read the complete data set.

Overall Market
* Gartner estimates that 161 million Bluetooth equipped products will ship in 2003; 362 million in 2004.
* In October 2003, Matthew Towers of IMS Research (which operates a Bluetooth semiconductor volume tracking service) said that for the first time ever, total Bluetooth product shipments worldwide exceeded one million units per week, in 3rd quarter 2003.
* According to IMS Research in 2003, handsets will make up 36M of the 51M products shipping with Bluetooth. The remaining 15M products are spread pretty evenly among headsets, PDAs/handhelds, notebooks/laptops, mice/keyboards, printers, digital cameras, and desktop PCs make up about 3M of the total.
* In an October 2003 report Frost & Sullivan says that Bluetooth has hit a major milestone in its evolution as the technology enters the maturity stage of its lifecycle. A stable specification and installed base that runs into millions of units is proof that it has been a success.
* ABI predicts there will be 25 million Bluetooth enabled automobiles by 2008, worldwide.
* William Clark, research director at Gartner says: The Bluetooth Core Specification Version 1.2 adaptive frequency hopping feature opens up possibilities for complimentary wireless technologies to coexist in devices such as PCs, PDAs, and mobile phones.
* In-Stat/MDR estimates that the number of devices with Bluetooth wireless technology will jump from near nothing in 2000 to nearly 1.4 billion units in 2005.
* According to Jupiter Research, 63% of consumers are willing to carry two or more devices, explaining why converged devices are not being adopted as expected. Bluetooth wireless technology can essentially converge two or more devices together whenever the consumer wants that functionality.
* According to a Forrester Research Report published in June of 2003, by 2008, they believe there will be 286.5m Bluetooth enabled phones, PDAs and notebooks in Europe alone as well as a plethora of wireless headsets, keyboards, mice and other peripherals that will use Bluetooth too. Proportionately, this means around 77 percent of phones, 60 percent of PDAs and 67 percent of notebooks will have the technology built in.

Mobile Devices
* IDC forecasts that nearly 80% of new mobile phones will have Bluetooth built-in by 2006, up from about 2.7% in 2002.
* IDC forecasts that 70% of handheld computers are expected to be Bluetooth-ready in 2006, up from just 1.1% in 2002.
* Allied Business Intelligence (ABI) estimates that computing devices will account for 21% of all Bluetooth enabled devices shipped in 2003, with 27% share by 2007.
* Jupiter Research says: The mass market will not likely adopt media-centric phones and PDAs with telephony over the next 12 months; handset manufacturers should instead focus on app-extensive phones, adding a Bluetooth radio (and Bluetooth software profiles) to provide rich converged functionality with single-task devices such as PDAs and cameras.* According to a Forrester Research Report published in June of 2003, 40 million Bluetooth-enabled phones have shipped worldwide, and over 1,000 new Bluetooth products are currently being developed by more than 2,000 companies.

Chips
* Bluetooth chipset shipments worldwide: 11.2 million in 2001; 33.8 million in 2002; projected 100+ million 2003 and 1.1 billion by 2007 (representing $2.54 billion) [ABI report].
* Bluetooth chipsets will surge from 10.4 to 510 million units from 2001 to 2006, a five-year 118% CAGR, with silicon revenue rising to over $1.8 billion in 2006 [In-Stat/MDR report].
* With chip prices at less than $5 and falling, Bluetooth is already making inroads into Europe?s single biggest device market. Penetration will rise from 26 million handsets this year to 239 million in 2008; as functionality is built directly into phones, the aftermarket will drop off quickly in 2004 [Forrester report].
* A new study by Frost & Sullivan believes that the spectacular growth in the semiconductor sector, a hotbed of Bluetooth development, bodes well for the continued buoyancy characterizing the overall marketplace.