Both Apple and Nordic Semiconductor are now on the Bluetooth group’s SIG board of directors. They will hold that position for two years, starting on July 1, 2011, and they will be joining Intel, Motorola, Lenovo, Nokia, Microsoft, Ericsson AB, and Toshiba on the Bluetooth SIG board.
The main focus of the group is to drive Bluetooth expansion into platform and sensor markets. Many people in the press are now speculating that the move could mean that more iOS and Mac specific Bluetooth devices could be on the horizon.
According to the Bluetooth group’s press release:
The way consumers utilize digital devices is undergoing a fundamental shift – mobile phones, laptops and tablets, TVs and even cars now stand to serve as hub devices that capture data from small sensors monitoring everything from footsteps, heart rate activity, blood pressure and sugar levels to house temperature. Hub devices turn that data into useful information at the application layer, then may push that information to the cloud.
Adding Apple to an already strong board of directors is obviously a smart move, and we don’t need to re-state the obvious here, but it’s pretty clear that Bluetooth is going to be playing a very large part in our devices as we move to a more mobile computing environment. Hopefully this is the beginning of something great for both Apple and Bluetooth.
