CSR’s BlueICE to 'transform' wireless PC peripheral market
Bluetooth specialists CSR (CSR.L) today launched software which it said would transform wireless PC peripherals from a premium after-market purchase to a mass market standard, bundled with new PCs.
The Cambridge-based company’s BlueCore Input Connection Enhancement will allow Bluetooth keyboards and mice, using BlueCore silicon, to connect with the host PC simply by adding batteries.
It will also enable them to be used during boot-up, before the operating system has loaded, negating the need for a reserve wired keyboard.
This feature means that wireless peripherals can now be bundled as standard with PC shipments, the company said, expanding the total available market for wireless keyboards and mice to about 340 million units, bringing it in line with the 2006 PC sector TAM of 169 million units.
The company, formerly known as Cambridge Silicon Radio, has been under pressure recently because of a profit warning it issued because of lower than expected sales of sophisticated mobile phones using its sophisticated Bluetooth technology.
Share price
This morning its share price shed a further 3.4%, or 24p, to 673p, valuing the company at just above £800 million, substantially down on its value earlier this year.
The company has argued that it is more than a supplier to the mobile market.
Simplicity of connection and the difficulty in changing BIOS settings were previously major barriers to the bundling of wireless peripherals with new PCs,David McCall, VP of the PC strategic business unit at CSR said.
“Consumers would need to keep a wired keyboard in reserve if they needed to boot from a CD or change the BIOS as the wireless devices needed to wait for the OS to load the Bluetooth software stack before they could connect. BlueICE circumvents this issue, meaning that a BlueICE keyboard and mouse are as simple and straightforward to use as one with a wire,” he said.
This means new PC bundles can include wireless peripherals that can compete with the current range of premium wireless devices that also offer pre-boot-up connectivity via a dongle.
BlueICE is a collection of software developed to work in wireless keyboards, mice and the host interface (either built into a PC or housed in a dongle). Using BlueICE for all three components of the desktop PC system allows advanced features of the software, such as Auto-Connect, to be used.
27th November 2006
