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April 2003 - Vertical markets such as healthcare,
government, services, transportation /communications/utilities,
manufacturing and mining, and retail will offer
a myriad of opportunities for the deployment of
Bluetooth, according to In-Stat/MDR (www.instat.com).
The high-tech market research firm reports that
these vertical markets will grow aggressively to
over 2 million deployed Bluetooth nodes worldwide
in 2007, and although there is activity in a great
variety of applications and vertical markets, healthcare
and manufacturing present the greatest opportunities
in the near term. |
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Most
applications being considered initially are cable replacement
uses, such as accessing machine health, reconfiguring
equipment, sensor data, patient information, patient
monitoring, security access, asset tracking, and others.
The opportunities for replacing existing cable/wired
systems, whether wired or proprietary wireless systems,
will be somewhat limited in the long run, but will be
faster to realize in the short term. The opportunities
for adding new capabilities via wireless will be slower,
but present greater prospects in the long run.
Many
companies will still wait until they feel that Bluetooth,
802.11, and other wireless technologies have transitioned
to a satisfactory "proven" stage before deploying. All
indications point to deployments that will be incremental
in nature, that is to say, mostly tens to hundreds per
installation. Some systems may use only a few Bluetooth
nodes, while other installations will involve up to
a few hundred.
In-Stat/MDR
has also found that:
- Bluetooth
offers advantages in noisy and dusty environments,
because of its frequency hopping; therefore, Bluetooth
is a good fit for the military, manufacturing, and
mining verticals.
- Bluetooth
is ideal for short distance applications that lend
themselves to low power, such as patient monitoring,
strip chart recorders, upgrading instrumentation/equipment
with serial adapters, machine health/status sensors,
and a variety of embedded applications yet to be explored.
- Interest
is high in the US for Bluetooth deployment in medical
equipment, as over 50% of this type of equipment is
manufactured in the US. Europe has high interest in
medical equipment as well, especially Italy and Germany,
in addition to PC terminal security and patient information.
This
Market Alert is drawn from the In-Stat/MDR report, "Manufacturing
& Healthcare Dominate Bluetooth Vertical Markets",
which analyzes the worldwide vertical markets that present
the primary opportunities for Bluetooth solutions, including
healthcare, government, services, transportation/communications/utilities,
manufacturing and mining, and retail.
SOURCE
Instat Press Release Back
to News Reports
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