The Bluetooth SIG Board of Directors today announced the appointment of new officers including current board member Joakim Linde, a Sr. Wireless Architect at Apple, appointed as Secretary of the board. Linde joins other new officers appointed today including Toby Nixon of Microsoft as Chairman and Magnus Olsson of Ericsson AB as Vice-chairman.
Linde takes over Toby Nixon’s role as secretary as Nixon becomes Chairman of the board, while the previous Vice Chairman, James Rutledge of Lenovo, is no longer listed as a board member. The previous Chairman, Svein-Egil Nielsen of Nordic Semiconductor, is still listed as a board member following the new appointments.
“The Bluetooth SIG encourages its members to work together for the betterment of Bluetooth® wireless technology—a wireless solution uniquely poised to serve as the backbone of the Internet of Things (IoT),” said Mark Powell, executive director of the Bluetooth SIG. “Our Board of Directors and Associate members are volunteers who dedicate their time, thought leadership, and expertise to ensure Bluetooth remains the benchmark standard for wireless technology. We appreciate their guidance and look forward to working with Toby, Magnus, and Joakim in their new roles.”
While Linde has long been a member of the Bluetooth SIG board of directors, the new role gives Apple a higher strategic position among the team tasked with “guiding and promoting the Bluetooth wireless standard.” Linde has been a Senior Wireless Architect at Apple since 2010 and before that was the Director of Software at Nvidia.
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BLE 4.2 news went trough the tech media as if it was “here” and I was super exited. The thing is It won’t be here until major phones have it built in and chip makers get on board with compatible chips. TI is currently one of the biggest chip makers I’ve seen selling BLE chips but they don’t seem to be in a rush to get out 4.2 compatible ones. They are still finishing up 4.1 products.
So I hope a high up Apple rep can help speed up this transition. I will be really surprised if the watch doesn’t ship with it but maybe I’m being over hopeful in how fast this can go.
I ferl your pain. Unfortunately, BT technology takes a long time to ratify and then impliment. I’ve been watching BT since the beginning and every time a new version is bring eirked on the media announces it as if it’s ready for primetime. There is also the case of how much better it is than the current version, deals already in place for current BT chips, and the fact that each new version is a hardware revision instead of a software which just makes it more difficult to switch to. In any case I would not expect BT 4.2 to be in devices before this fall at the earliest if its complete be the end of this month and definitely not in smartphones until maybe Q4 of this year be the big manufactures like Apple and Samsung.