The ultra wide band future may be upon us

Apparently the final certification process by the WiMedia Alliance is the only remaining hurdle between the manufacturers and mass commercialisation.

The immediate market — for which many vendors have already designed products and are ready to launch — is for wireless USB dongles and hubs to retrofit existing USB products. That will be the majority of shipments for the next 6 months. Beginning in the second half of 2007, five other applications will emerge that will begin to dominate wireless USB shipments. Those five are:
• PCs, mostly laptops using wireless USB in a PCI Express (PCIe) Mini Card form factor;
• Hard disk drives (external hard drives for PCs with wireless USB embedded inside will emerge in the second quarter of 2007);
• Printers;
• Digital cameras;
• MP3 players.

In 2008, handsets will begin adoption. This is partly because power consumption advances from chip vendors (including Staccato) will firmly meet the threshold of handsets, but it is more due to the fact that the design cycles for handsets take longer. Bluetooth 3.0 will be available sometime in 2008, and WiMedia radios operating at 6GHz and above will be implemented by then.