Document Actions
50 million WiMAX devices in US by 2010?
WiMAX could be "bigger than Wi-Fi" if that's the case.
I caught a Reuters interview of Sprint's
Barry West at
http://www.redherring.com/Home/22577 where Mr. West forecasts 50
million WiMAX access devices in the US by 2010. That's a staggering pace of
uptake. My unverified, unscientific figure for Wi-Fi access devices in the
US is 40 million. Per Mr. West, WiMAX will be "bigger than Wi-Fi" by 2010.
The 50 million figure is based on commitments by major handheld device
vendors to turn out that many devices by 2010.
When we compare Mr. West's 50 million WiMAX devices by 2010 to an estimated
40 million Wi-Fi devices, I'm not completely incredulous. When we compare
the two technologies, we see the following:
- Aside from Intel, Wi-Fi never had a focused corporate sponsor putting billions of dollars in its direction (Cisco's Wi-Fi devices have a number of proprietary angles to them to capture a purely enterprise market vs. a full-blown commercial/consumer market; ditto on Motorola Canopy)
- No 600-lb gorilla of a service provider pushed Wi-Fi demanding compliance from a series of world class device makers such as Sprint is doing with Motorola, Samsung, Nokia-Siemens for example
- No significant service provider bet billions of $ on Wi-Fi in the way that Sprint is betting $5 billion on WiMAX in the form of xohm
- Intel WiMAX chipsets in laptops provide a de facto path to subscribership: buy laptop, turn it on, get WiMAX
- I predict joint marketing ventures with retailers to promote WiMAX-ready devices (laptops, residential subscriber devices, phones and other handhelds)
So count me in as saying "its possible" there
will be 50 million WiMAX subscriber devices in the US by 2010 making WiMAX
"bigger than wi-Fi".
Frank Ohrtman
WMX Systems
www.wmxsystems.com
_____
tags:
50 Million wiMAX devices
It’s the tie in between manufacturers and networks that is always the biggest source of join marketing efforts in the consumer electronics sector, the retailers will be glad to ride on the back of that cash wave. In Europe we saw Brands employing specialist agencies to promote B2B sales of wifi such as RedCup, Smartfusion and NewTouch Marketing, maybe there’s some stuff from the old world that will be coming to communicate the new?
WiMAX and Wi-Fi coexist
Intel is making chips to do BOTH WiMAX and Wi-Fi. Consumers need BOTH for outdoors and indoors use. We don't care if the outdoor access is WiMAX or 3G+, we just want it fast, cheap, TRUELY MOBILE like our cell phones and INTERWORK with Wi-Fi.
50 Million WiMAX devices