Freescale and Motorola ditch the UWB Forum
This could be a bloody one. After Bluetooth SIG picked the WiMedia Alliance last week for their Bluetooth successor -- and with hopes to end the bickering between WiMedia Alliance and the UWB Forum -- Motorola and Freescale, founding members of the UWB Forum, are splitting off to do their own "Cable Free USB" thing. Apparently the UWB Forum peeps just weren't getting it, and Motorola is betting that the biggest application for all this tech will be a wireless version of USB. They're not shying away from a fight either, stating: "We don't think anything else matters for UWB more than our approach with [Cable Free] USB 2.0. We're showing our hand: the battle for UWB is on. We're pulling out of every effort not related to it." The UWB Forum is still 100 members or so strong, but with heavyweights like Intel and Philips among the WiMedia camp, and Moto doing their own thing, it's going to get ugly pretty soon. We know we just can't wait to buy three different adapters for wireless keyboards, wireless phone syncing, and wireless data storage.