At this point, Bluetooth is a ubiquitous technology that has become commonplace in a world dominated by smartphones and mobile devices.  As expected, the growth of the mobile market and mobile application developers utilizing Bluetooth has increased exponentially.

With that in mind, there is still some question about what system should application developers work with when creating Bluetooth-enabled applications.  Can all Bluetooth-enabled devices communicate with each other? 

The answer is yes or no; and the question has resulted in some confusion in the mobile app community.  The Bluetooth mechanism for Apple’s iOS devices – including iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch – cannot interact with any non-iOS operating systems, like Android or Blackberry.  So mobile app developers developing for Apple devices will be limited to only connecting with other Apple devices via Bluetooth.

However, applications built for and designed to work with other operating systems like Android and BlackBerry can communicate with devices universally – that includes Apple’s devices.  So a mobile app developer developing for Android would be able to connect via Bluetooth to an iPad or iPhone – but not the other way around.

What this means is that mobile app developers are probably better off developing for BlackBerry, Android, or Windows Mobile.  These mobile SDKs support Bluetooth communication by writing minimal code and universally connect with all other Bluetooth devices.

To learn more about Bluetooth compatibility, check out the following links:

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/
Conceptual/GameKit_Guide/Introduction/Introduction.html

https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/wireless/bluetooth.html

https://source.android.com/compatibility/

Call us at 484-892-5713 or Contact Us today to learn more what Bluetooth Application Developers Should Know About iOS.