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Hewlett-Packard is working with 3Com to deliver Bluetooth technology in its mobile computing products starting with its OmniBook notebooks.

The alliance marks the troubled networking company's strategic move into original equipment manufacturing to provide hardware manufacturers with Bluetooth technology.

Kelvin Tan, director of mobile e-services at HP Asia-Pacific, said the firm was committed to the further development of Bluetooth wireless technology.

'3Com's mobile solutions will complete the link to wireless WAN network connections for e-services,' Mr Tan said.

'We are already working with other partners to . . . ensure our customers get quick and effective benefits from developments in Bluetooth wireless technology.'

HP is not the first to put Bluetooth in laptops. Last year, IBM introduced a ThinkPad with a Bluetooth chip.

The Bluetooth wireless radio technology operates at 2.5 GHz, linking devices over short ranges without the need for cables. Links are made through low-cost transceivers embedded in devices such as mobile phones, access points, printers, adapters, PCs and personal digital assistants.

The much-anticipated low-cost Bluetooth processors have not yet become evident on the market.

Mr Tan said the cost of Bluetooth chips was high and so HP would not be integrating Bluetooth chips across of its Jornadas and OmniBooks at one go.

He expected costs to fall once manufacturers increased output of Bluetooth chips.

Forrester Research forecasts that by the end of the year 11 million Bluetooth-enabled devices would have been shipped.

However, the technology - both in terms of adoption and development - is still in its infancy.

A big embarrassment at the recent CeBit 2001 IT trade fair in Hannover, Germany, was the Bluetooth Exchange booth which featured many vendors with Bluetooth products displaying how their offering could work with each other. The exchange was a flop as many products could not communicate.

'There is a lot of work right now on inter-operability of Bluetooth products. HP has established Cooltown to focus on connecting appliances to e-services in an open and highly inter-operable manner,' Mr Tan said.

Cooltown, besides being a showcase of HP technologies working with technologies from key partners, will act as an incubator of innovative ideas from HP engineers and software developers.

Three Cooltowns have been established - in Palo Alto, California, in London and in Singapore.

While fits and starts are common for all new technologies, Bluetooth is in a race for dominance against other, already keenly adopted, mobile Internet access technologies.

Even though there is a definite move by the industry towards Bluetooth technology, with more than 2000 developers affiliated with the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, it lags behind wireless LAN technology IEEE 802.11 in adoption, use and breadth of products.

The biggest advocates of IEEE 802.11 are Cisco Systems, Intel and Lucent, and their technologies already are in use in many ideal indoor environments such as airports, shopping malls, hotels and cafes in many parts of the world, including Asia.

Cisco and Lucent are promoting IEEE 802.11 which is on a licence-free spectrum, as a low-cost 2.5G network linked by base stations for telecommunications operators to provide mobile Internet services.

French mobile-phone maker Sagem will develop handsets to support IEEE 802.11.

At present, Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11 cannot co-exist. One major concern is that Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11, both operating on the same 2.5 GHz spectrum, would result in interference or disruptions whenever the two technologies were in operation.

Mr Tan said that HP's commitment was to Bluetooth.

While he admitted that IEEE 802.11 had a start in terms of adoption, he foresaw Bluetooth eventually dominating.

'We think that Bluetooth will eventually be better received than IEEE 802.11. The chip is small and can be embedded in more devices.

'In the end, we think that Bluetooth will become the prevalent technology,' he said.



Hewlett-Packard links with 3Com on Bluetooth project