Bluetooth technology is widely used in cell phones.  Why hasn't it
taken off in MP3 players like iPod?  I am a journalist and am
exploring this idea.  Is it a technical problem?  Costs?  I want to
determine if a breakthrough is near.

---

Clarification of Question by chichicat-ga on 23 Mar 2005 12:03 PST

Will wireless Ipod be possible in the near future?

First of all, I have to say that this kind of goods has already on
sale. Maybe you can check the SonyEricson website. And why you didn't
see much people using bluetooth Mp3 player? That's because basically,
we are using a BT ver1.1, and recently the ver1.2 will become popular
maybe in a couple of months. 1.2 class will support hi-fi function,
and make it sounds as stereo type.
Another reason is, the Bluetooth Ear phone only support one side of
your Ear, It would be strange to listen music with only one side
right?

Anyway, the cost would still be a big problem too. If you want to buy
a Bluetooth phone for mp3, I would suggest you to wait a little bit.
Hope this will answer your question.

I appreciate your comments.  Can you elaborate on how the BT ver1.1
sound?  is it terrible?  and why don't bluetooth ear phone support
both ears?  is it purely a technical obstacle?  I checked out the
ericsson site but only saw one-sided earpiece.  is there any two-sided
ones out there now on the market?  anyone trying to come up with this?
 who is developing the BT ver 1.2 technology?  Thanks very much for
your help.

I've been interested in Bluetooth(BT) for music streams as well. Specially from
my phone to my sound system. I hope what I've found answers your questions.

"Implementations with versions 1.1 and 1.2 reach speeds of 723.1 kbit/s."
[http://www.answers.com/topic/bluetooth]
723.1 kbit/s is well enough for audio playback. 

According to Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3] the sound
quality of mp3 files are "excellent at 224...320 kbit/s, very good at
192...224 kbit/s, good at 128...192 kbit/s".
The highest bit rate a mp3 file can have is 320 kbit/s. 
The sound quality is not the problem. 

Today most BT headsets are used for conversations, that's why stereo
hedseats are not that popular yet.
But they exist [http://www.xterasys.com/bsh201.htm]. 
BT 1.2 supports stereo headsets and the only phone I can think of
which has BT 1.2 is Samsung S66
[http://communications.siemens.com/cds/frontdoor/0,2241,us_en_0_75836_rArNrNrNrN,00.html].
Which makes it fully possible to stream stereo high quality music from
a phone to a BT stereo headset as long as the software supports it.

I'm not sure about this but I'd guess that battery time is the problem
with BT 1.0-1.2. This will not be the case with BT 2.0 as it's
supposed to have
"Halved power consumption due to shorter duty cycles."
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth]

From the same source you can find the answer to your last question
about who's developing BT:
"...first developed by Ericsson, later formalized by the Bluetooth
Special Interest Group (SIG). The SIG was formally announced on May
20, 1999. It was established by Sony Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Toshiba and
Nokia, and later joined by many other companies as Associate or
Adopter members."

I know that http://www.redtagwarehouse.com has bluetooth mp3 players
on it site. At least it did a few days ago.

Data transfer rate with bluetooth is comparitively slower than with a
data cable(a song of size 3megs can be transferred thru bluetooth in
10minutes or more approx.....this is waat happens )& since Ipod's
would come in various sizes of upto 20GB storage. Music freaks
wouldn't have all the time to upload & dload music @ snail pace.
Bluetooth versionswith higher bandwidth must sort the problem.