According to a report by ABI Research, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices are forecasted to reach over 1.6 billion annual shipments by 2023. Increasing opportunities in smart home, beacons and asset tracking, emerging IoT applications, alongside growth in existing key markets and the emergence of audio over BLE will enable the technology to achieve a CAGR of 27% between 2018 and 2023, tripling in size.
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has witnessed tremendous growth since its introduction in 2010 because continued technical enhancements have ensured that the technology can take advantage of opportunities across an ever-increasing number of verticals and use cases.
BLE’s ubiquitous support in mobile devices, combined with its ability to support mesh networking, beacon functionality, and most recently, centimeter-level location accuracy with the introduction of Bluetooth 5.1 and radio direction finding (RDF), is enabling BLE to be increasingly leveraged within smart consumer devices, larger scale home and commercial building automation environments, and RTLS deployments with more stringent accuracy requirements.
In addition to these recent enhancements, from 2020 onward, Bluetooth is anticipated to enable high-quality audio streaming over BLE, providing a boost for the existing headset market and the emerging True Wireless audio device market.
Last year, during CES 2019, Dialog Semiconductor demonstrated audio over BLE proof of concept utilizing their SmartBond SoCs. It is expected that from 2020, the Bluetooth audio market will take advantage of upcoming enhancements to better support truly cable-free earbud experiences while enhancing the battery life and user experience, though it may take some time for the standardization process to translate to wider mobile and ecosystem support.
Click here to read the report on the Bluetooth Low Energy Market.
