Wireless fight growing over open Ultrawideband
Two camps are already fighting to define Ultrawideband (UWB) technology: Motorola and XtremeSpectrum versus Intel and Texas Instruments. Motorola and XtremeSpectrum recently said they are backing one of two proposals for UWB that will offer the technology without any royalties or fees. The two companies face competition from Intel and Texas Instruments (TI), which plan to offer a competing version of UWB, also without fees. Intel and TI are the early favorites in this fight. The two companies are currently waiting for an endorsement of their standard by Microsoft. Traditionally, companies developing new wireless standards charge royalties on the new technologies as a way to compensate for R&D costs. In the case of UWB, competition in the chip market is already so fierce that established heavyweights such as Motorola and Intel are ready to give away these fees just to be able to define the technology. These competing companies hope that by defining the market early, they will be able to capitalize on early demand for wireless chip products, as well as develop potential device and application ecosystems around their technology. Ultrawideband promises personal area networks (PAN) -- and potentially WLANs as well -- with speeds far greater than current PAN technologies like Bluetooth. Researcher ABI predicts that the UWB market could be worth $1.39 billion by 2007.
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http://news.com.com/2100-7351-5098712.htmlDavid H. Deans
http://daviddeans.webhop.net
