Qualcomm Adopts Bluetooth

I smiled this week when I learned about Qualcomm paying $2.5B in cash for CSR, the Bluetooth pioneer. As much as the Google/Nest transaction earlier this year, this deal is a profound shift in the wireless landscape, reinforcing the strategic position of Bluetooth as the leading M2M / IoT protocol.

Bluetooth Smart has been an absolute winner in personal gadgets and wearables, but it has not gained a similar level of acceptance in Smart Automation. Up till now we, at Seed, were feeling somehow lonely, pioneering the widespread adoption of Bluetooth Smart in various Smart Home / Smart Environment product segments. The most common dilemma our customers have had was "why not WiFi". And we have kept on repeating the same set of advantages: significantly lower power, ease of use, lower cost. Customers have been expressing their doubts "but Bluetooth is short range and it is point-to-point only" while we have kept on evangelizing them proving we are reaching 1000ft line of sight with our modules today, our devices are capable of running a mesh network on top of the standard Bluetooth protocol, and we can control unlimited number of nodes using unlimited number of controllers (smartphones) all at the same time.

Now most of the doubts are gone. Qualcomm, the strongest WiFi proponent, shells out a huge sum of money to buy Bluetooth (and especially Bluetooth Smart) expertise. So there is no longer the question of "whether (Bluetooth will have a role in the Smart / IoT world)". The doubts are gone. The questions are "when?" and "how?". The answers are "now" and "widely".

Based on our experience and engagement we see many product segments enabled by Bluetooth Smart. Not only in homes (although this remains our core focus). We have large proof of concept installations in offices and even outdoor public spaces. If you are running a ZigBee or 6LoWPAN - based setup today, there is no fundamental reason the same cannot be done based on Bluetooth Smart. Or should we say, Bluetooth Pro. It is just a matter of a right combination of smart hardware and software and the results are most promising!