October 16, 2007
Bluetooth finally makes its way to America
I remember some years ago talking to an American friend who was visiting London and was astonished to find everyone walking around talking into a mobile phone. What is the point of this craze? she asked. Why should people need to keep talking in this bizarre way?
We know where that ended up. Americans followed Europeans into the mobile phone craze and are just as prone to whip them out at any opportunity now.
But Americans were still lagging in that other street necessity, the Bluetooth headset, when I arrived in New York a couple of years ago. I had come from a country where lots of people had odd devices stuck in their ears as they walked down the street to find none here.
That has now been corrected with a vengeance and the Bluetooth headset is becoming as much of an accessory here as there.
It is strange, though, that in a global technolgoy market the US should persistently lag Europe in mobile telephony. Apple can link its iPhone here to a 2G network without much comment but 3G is a pervasive reality in Europe.
The US popularised WiFi before it took off in Europe and Bluetooth used to be regarded as mainly a European technolgy. The two continents have finally converged on using both.
