Nokia launched its Wibree personal area network technology in October 2006 as an extension to Bluetooth. Today, Wibree became Bluetooth. The Nokia-led Wibree Forum is to merge with the Bluetooth SIG, the body that oversees the wireless standard.
Wibree, which has been under development within Nokia since 2001, was established as a very low power technology for networking nearby highly portable devices. Like Bluetooth, it was planned to operate in the 2.4GHz band, connecting devices within a 10m range. However, its speed was capped at 1Mbps and was more about exchanging small packets of data and control information than transmitting data in bulk, as Bluetooth is often used for.
The applications Nokia had in mind are links between phones and watches - the kind of thing Sony Ericsson showed off last year with the Bluetooth watch it co-developed with Fossil. Nokia also mentioned sports sensors - again there's a precedent: Apple's iPod+Nike pedometer-on-your-music-player gadget.
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In a way, the move is a failure on Nokia's part to convince the world that it needs a new, separate standard for the wireless connections Wibree of was designed for. Especially, since Wibree was always designed to be Bluetooth friendly. Perhaps the Finnish phone giant should have submitted the technology to the Bluetooth SIG in the first place.
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