Wibree, the wireless standard by Nokia is expected to hit the market by the mid of 2008. The technology will co-exist with the bluetooth devices and will almost be like a low power low cost version of the bluetooth. The transmission distance will be less than 10mts and and transmission bandwidth will be less than 1Mbps.

Even though initiated by nokia, the bluetooth SIG has taken up wibree under its wings. Wibree will be a part of bluetooth specifications and will be known as ultra low power bluetooth technology. Like bluetooth, wibree specifications also will be freely available and anyone can make wibree devices.

Bluetooth is mainly used in file transfer, audio streaming etc where a good amount of data flow is there. Wibree’s main usage scenario will be places where only short bursts of data transfer is needed. The major applications come under HID (Human interface devices), sensor networks and wearable electronics where only small amounts of data is transferred, and that too only once in while.