Studies Predict the Future of Handhelds, Bluetooth

Market research firm IDC released a study this week that says sales of handhelds will increase 43% this year over last year's sales. This is a noticeable change from their 88% increase on 2000 but not bad considering the slowing world economy. IDC goes on to predict that the handheld market will grow an average of 39% per year through 2005, with shipments reaching 70.9 million that last year.

They predicted that the Asia-Pacific region to be the real area of growth, increasing at an annual rate of 60%. Growth in the U.S. will not be as rapid. Last year, the U.S. accounted for 49% of all handheld sales. By 2005, that will decrease to 39%.

A separate study by ARC Group predicted that, by 2006, more than 500 million devices making use of Bluetooth will be used worldwide. The bad news is that these will almost entirely be on high-end devices because the Bluetooth chipset will remain too expensive for consumers until 2006. They found that Bluetooth chipsets will be between $11 and $25 by the end of this year but predict that they won't fall below the Bluetooth SIG's target price of $5 before 2006.

Related Articles:

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• WAVEclip Brings Bluetooth to Palm V

On the Web:

• Bluetooth Special Interest Group