Cahners In-Stat predicts that shipments of Bluetooth chips will push 13 million this year, and reach 750 million by 2005. Excellent shipment results for this year, the firm says, will help further cement the fact that Bluetooth is here to stay.

While the U.K. firm Micrologic Research is standing by its original forecast published in August 2000 of 5 million Bluetooth chips sold by 2001, it is now projecting 1.5 billion units will be sold by 2005. In the interim, the firm predicts that 25 million chips will be sold in 2002 and 181 million in 2003.

By all accounts, Bluetooth chip sales have been outselling the more expensive wireless LAN chipset 2 to 1, according to Cahners. Even though these two technologies serve different purposes — Bluetooth is ideal for ad hoc connections between cell phones and PDAs while WLAN is suited for the office environment — they are constantly being compared.

That is why educating the public on the benefits of the technology is important to spur demand. "Once people are educated on the benefits, says Joyce Putscher, analyst with In-Stat, demand will rise. "The challenge lies in getting the message across, and being able to educate the general public correctly in a variety of ways and channels."

Findings can be found in Cahners In-Stat’s report ‘Bluetooth Overtakes 802.11x with 2001 Shipments on Track,’ and Micrologic’s study ‘Wireless Data Communication 2001.’