Entertainment Products to Be 25% of 2018 Bluetooth Shipments, Says SIG

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group turned 20 and the 33,000-member trade group on Tuesday broke out by category the expected Bluetooth device shipments out of a projected 4 billion across consumer, commercial and industrial markets this year. Some 2.3 billion Bluetooth phones, tablets and PCs will ship this year, it said. Bluetooth speakers will be two-thirds of all speaker shipments in 2018, “only a fraction” of the 1.2 billion Bluetooth-enabled audio and entertainment devices forecast to enter distribution. Some 600 million smart home devices are projected to ship this year, it said. Bluetooth will come standard in 86 percent of all new cars, trucks and SUVs shipped in 2018, said the trade alliance. In the connected device market, Bluetooth Low Energy is on track to ship 780 million Bluetooth-enabled devices in the year. The SIG cited Proximity.Directory projections, saying 84 percent of global airports, 93 percent of Major League Baseball stadiums and 75 percent of NFL fields will be using Bluetooth beacons by 2019, with location-based services deployments expected to increase by five times by 2022.