[sebastien_bois]

I remember watching a tech news report on cable TV (yeah, that long ago) about a hot new tech called 'Bluetooth' that was going to revolutionize device interoperability, and the BT chipset would be at most $5 of the device cost.... until that never happened.

[anoncareer0212]

It actually did, charmingly. usually I just click upvote on these but it was stunning to read one and think "wait...that is exactly what happened, even if its not perfect"

[sebastien_bois]

Yeah, but how long did it take to truly drop to the $5 mark? When bluetooth stuff came out (mice, keyboards, etc.) they were exorbitantly expensive. It was way cheaper for manufacturers to sell stuff with their own RF dongles instead of using BT.

[Exmoor]

I recall buying a USB Bluetooth adapter in the mid 2000's that was maybe $12 shipped from Asia. If that was a the cost to the consumer for a device that was mostly a bluetooth radio I suspect that the cost to add bluetooth to a high volume product was probably at or below $5 ~15 years ago.

[Gibbon1]

I remember the marketing guys had this spiel that WiFi was for businesses and that consumers would use Bluetooth for wireless networking. Because at $50-100 obviously WiFi was 'too expensive' for home use. LOL.

I think WIFI chipsets hit $5 before Bluetooth ones.

Reminds me of a problem with how people think of 'low power RF'. You don't actually care so much about continuous current draw (within reason) what you care about is energy per bit. Which means high bandwidth doesn't penalize you as much as you would assume. Bonus in practice the longer your packet takes to transmit the higher the chance it gets clobbered. Bluetooth going with a low bandwidth low continuous power radio; FAIL.