Bluetooth Qualification Program Website - Qualified Products OK, I'm blown away! Bluetooth has begun to take hold in the market, despite predictions that it would falter due to high component costs and a larger-than-acceptable physical footprint. Evidently the technology has been able to exploit Moore's Law and drive ruthless execution to deliver customer value in a much shorter timeframe than I would have expected.

Clearly, the wireless market is now solidifying into three segments -- WANs, LANs and PANs, each of which either has adopted or is approaching a standard (LANs=802.11x, PANs=Bluetooth, WANs~=3G?). It's a pretty safe bet that, by the end of this calendar year, laptop & PDA vendors will take big steps toward integrating wireless PAN and LAN support (though PDAs will probably lean more toward PAN + WAN).

Here's the daydream I'm caught up in -- I'm walking down the airport concourse toward my departure gate when my cellphone/PDA vibrates. I pop on my Bluetooth headset and answer the call. Turns out our team needs a supporting document for an executive presentation that will result in funding our next major initiative, and the document is on my laptop. I get to the gate, sit down, and pull out the laptop, which wakes up and finds the network. I login to our corporate VPN and e-mail the document to the team, saving the day and getting our project budgeted. Oh, and while I'm waiting for the flight to board, I sync my phone with my laptop so I'll get "buzzed" about my appointments.

OK, so I'm still looking for a Palm-based phone that supports SDIO (to be able to use Palm's Bluetooth card with the Motorola headset), but we're sooooo close...