Don’t believe the UWB rubbish

Paraphrasing the great Mark Twain, the rumours of UWB’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. I admit that I am lucky enough to have a set of contacts in the wireless industry that give me a bit of an advantage over the average, broadstroke tech journalist, but it does get my goat when I read the guff currently being distributed by a lot of august members of the technology press.

If we are to believe what the media is saying, UWB is dead or dying. Now, I admit that I am no engineer, and that my view is more commercially than bits’n’bytes -based, but this is just not the case. For all sorts of reasons of which I do have a sound-enough understanding, UWB has an important and valuable role to play in the medium and long-term high speed wireless market.

Why is UWB struggling, and why is it currently on the back foot? Well, there are various reasons, some relating to a shortage of funding for UWB companies that are within a frustratingly short time of shipping product out of the door. Others are political. One industry luminary, for example, puts the failure of UWB to make it into Bluetooth 3.0 squarely at the door of one other individual. Nobody wants to name names at the moment, though, so I have to sit on this one. Meanwhile, Wi-Fi proponents rub their hands.

One thing is for sure though. The remaining UWB companies have failed to keep the PR going. Nobody has been saying anything positive, and so it is no wonder that the media has made assumptions, jumped to conclusions, and has broadcast to the world that UWB is an ex-factor.

The passage of time could prove me wrong, but I believe that UWB/Wireless USB will succeed and I’m ready to eat my hat if it doesn’t happen. Real products are hitting the streets – the Leyio and other products in the June issue of Incisor - and that really is the proof of the pudding. And the UWB companies are waking up to the need to let the world know that they are still here. Staccato Communications was one of the original trailblazers, and it is with great pleasure that I welcome the San Diego company back as an Incisor sponsor. Read Staccato’s take on the UWB market in the June issue of Incisor.

My message? Don’t believe everything you read in the press. Unless it is in Incisor.

Get off your backsides - failure isn't an option!

I wonder how many of you will have seen our humorous advert on page 17 of the latest issue of Incisor?

I hoped that our readers would appreciate the light-hearted tone, but there is a serious message there. At this time, marketing and PR seem to have ground to a halt in the industries that we cover. This is inextricably linked to a great deal of commercial uncertainty, courtesy of the global economic recession. Yet, every company that we work with wants and needs to stay financially secure, and what is the one thing that can underpin that? Sales, or course. Can a company expect to grow or even maintain current sales levels if it is invisible to the market? No, of course not.

Incisor is no different, and I will do whatever I can to keep my company safe too. That means talking to all of my business contacts, and exploring options as to how we can help each other.

The Incisor global audience is just as interested today in short-range wireless technology as it was 6-9 months ago, before the financial market imploded. I have recently been distributing a sample list of new subscribers that have signed up for Incisor in just the last two months. The quality of Incisor's subscribers is evident from this list, but bear in mind that this is just new subscriptions from the last 8 weeks. Our subscriber base is made up of many thousands of similar people who have all asked to receive Incisor since we started publishing in 1998. Hand on heart, I can say that this is a database that gets you directly to the most accurately targeted database imaginable for any company operating in the short-range wireless industry.

Most of the companies around me are in 'rabbit in the headlights' mode at the moment, but there is hope for those not prepared to sit around and wait for Armageddon. As I say in the title, failure isn't an option, and anyone talking to me at the moment about spreading their messages will find that I've effectively thrown the Incisor rate card out of the window.

Let's all make some noise, and keep the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, UWB, DECT, NFC, RFID, ZigBee and any other form of wireless fandango industry moving along.

The alternative is too awful to contemplate. I might have to get a proper job.