Motorola's Freescale division ups the ante on ultrawideband (UWB) by showing working demo of what's to come this Christmas: The head of UWB innovator XtremeSpectrum, acquired by Motorola last year, is now director of Motorola subsidiary Freescale's UWB division. Martin Rofheart showed a camcorder sending data over UWB to a plasma television, according to this second-hand report at Wi-Fi Planet.
Motorola's version of UWB is still winding its way through the IEEE process, but literally every other company in the industry (most members of the Multi-Band OFDM Alliance) withdrew from 802.15.3a to develop standards through trade organizations.
By showing working products and promising Christmas 2004 products, Motorola has raised the bar. Some industry experts are convinced that Motorola hasn't a chance at dominating the market, no matter how early they get in, because Intel, Texas Instruments, and many, many other firms will have competing products that all interoperate. Motorola's consumer partners' equipment will only work with other Motorola-based equipment.