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New 11g wireless standard "not expected to succeed" says TDK

Bluetooth pioneer Nick Hunn has issued a five-year prediction of how the wireless data market will unfold; and foresees that standard WiFi - that is, 802.11b - will remain the dominant non-Bluetooth technology till 2006.

By far the biggest-selling technology, he says , will be Bluetooth itself, now that it has outsold WiFi local network technology on a per-chip basis. And he predicts that the rate of growth of Bluetooth will speed up enormously.

"Bluetooth shipments have now overtaken 802.11b shipments," said Hunn. "The time has come for the two standards to stop fighting and agree that both are successful and complementary. The reality is that by the end of 2006, Bluetooth will ship as many products in one week as Wi-Fi ships in the entire year."

Controversially, Hunn doesn't expect current WLAN to be easily replaced by faster versions of WiFi: "As Bluetooth becomes better recognised from its handset penetration, the range of uses in PC, consumer and vertical applications will also rise. However, in terms of base numbers, the growth will be determined by handsets and headsets,"

Acknowledging its popularity and enormous numbers, Hunn says that 802.11b will remain the wireless networking standard of choice until at least 2006, showing year on year growth. "This is despite the advent of the higher speed 802.11a and the appearance of 802.11g, which we do not expect to be successful."