UWB Products Finally Here, Sort Of
The standard battle over ultra-wideband technology has raged on… and on and on. Despite the fact that there are still two rival proposals battling to become the ratified standard, some manufacturers aren’t waiting, showing off some of the first UWB products at last week’s CES show and this week’s Macworld Expo. They’re using chips from Freescale, which decided to forge ahead with its UWB spec and not wait for ratification. It’s likely that UWB, even multiple flavors of it, will succeed, simply because it’s too useful not to. But this standards spat won’t do anything to help, and will likely just result in a fragmented marketplace with plenty of incompatible products. After all, what’s the point of having standards if companies just ignore them?
