With impressive growth last year, Bluetooth is set to see another healthy year. In its new study entitled "Bluetooth: The Global Outlook," ABI Research estimates that the market for Bluetooth radios will grow by 71% to a level just over 500 million radio shipments in 2006.

Stuart Carlaw, ABI’s principal analyst, Wireless Connectivity, noted, "This growth will be attributed to extremely robust attach rate gains in the cellular handset market as well as a continuation of the explosive growth in the headset market."

The report forecasts that the market will grow at a compound annual rate of over 40% between 2004 and 2011, and equipment shipments are expected to break the 1 billion mark by 2009. Several new applications for Bluetooth are likely to come to the fore in the medium term: Most notable among these is the gaming market, which is likely to be spurred by the releases of the Nintendo Revolution and Sony's Playstation 3.

Furthermore, the analyst stated, "The importance of the stereo headset cannot be discounted. This product provides one-half of a match made in heaven with music-enabled cellular handsets. We expect this type of product to drag Bluetooth into myriad other use cases, such as rear-seat entertainment in the vehicle and the long-awaited Bluetooth MP3 player."

This report comes at a critical time for Bluetooth as silicon providers and OEMs begin to consider the inclusion of a UWB physical layer as the high data rate link for Bluetooth. Questions still remain as to whether the battle of the UWB standards will have a serious impact on uptake from a manufacturer's perspective. Going forward, however, Ultra Wide Bluetooth may well be the most prolific application for UWB, according to the analyst.

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