We imagine that most readers here are familiar with all the major wireless standards. So familiar that it is boring. We do not write much about wireless standards anymore, beyond the expectations for 6G, there is just not that much worth saying. But on our recent trip to Mobile World Congress, we learned about something new in the space. New to the point of being almost magical – a new wireless standard. Not only new, but also a new standard that almost no one we know has heard of. Like a magical treasure chest buried at the end of an electromagnetic rainbow, a new wireless standard is kinda exciting, especially when we learned that this standard is already widely deployed – over a 100 million chips already shipped.
The standard is Sparklink. Take a minute to Google it, and we imagine all you will find is links to guitar equipment. That seems to be the only application of Sparklink available in the US today. And therein lies the other part of this story. Like any good fairy tale about magical treasure, there is a ‘bogeyman‘ guarding the treasure. Because, of course, this standard was created by Huawei.
We are still studying the history of Sparklink, but it runs something like this. In 2018, when Huawei first came under serious US sanctions, it was ejected from numerous industry groups, including the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). Huawei was eventually let back in, but not before starting its own range of alternative standards. Sparklink seems to be the only that actually gained traction and is now shipping in volume.
Sparklink, also known as NearLink, is positioned as an alternative to Bluetooth, but designed in a way that addresses all the lessons learned from that standard’s shortcomings, a clean slate design to address all the issues discovered in the years since Bluetooth came on the scene. Sparklink’s air interface seems to be an amalgamation of elements from both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, with data technical specs that exceed both. This is a workable comparison of the standards.
As we noted above, something like 100 million Sparklink devices have already shipped. That is small in comparison to Bluetooth which ships a few billion units a year, but it a big enough to indicate it has real commercial traction.
What kinds of devices does Sparklink support? All of them. This is the International Sparklink Alliance’s web page, and this is their membership page. This contains a few hundred names covering almost every corner of electronics from phones and computers to cars and industrial systems. Almost all the members are based in the PRC, but we have learned that companies from other countries are starting to incorporate Sparklink into their own products, including notable categories like TVs and autos.
We believe these foreign companies will be bundling Sparklink with products for the China market. At this point, there are probably tens of millions of Sparklink users there, which is approaching critical mass beyond which any company selling into China will have to consider adopting the standard. Which of course opens the question as to how far this will go? Or put another way, at what point will Apple have to include Sparklink in the iPhone. Probably not an urgent question for them right now, but at some point Apple and every other consumer electronic company will have to review the need for Sparklink capabilities.
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