Operation WiMAX is underway, and carriers are spending some serious moolah on building out the networks. South Korea launched a WiBro network last year and in the U.S. Sprint and Clearwire are working on mobile WiMAX services, too. It’s about time for some attention on the devices themselves, which are starting to get sold in South Korea, and in the U.S., likely some time in 2008. Here’s some WiMAX goodies from Nokia, LG, Samsung, ZTE, and ZyXEL that should find their way to the market relatively soon.
Nokia: Nokia said on Monday that it will sell WiMAX mobile devices in early 2008. The Nokia folks told GigaTeam that the company’s Internet tablet line would get a WiMAX version. Nice. My N800 does feel like its missing something.
LG: When I was at CTIA I got a chance to check out an LG WiMAX smartphone they were calling DBDM (dual band dual mode), that included 3G, WiMAX and DMB (mobile video broadcast) capabilities. Broadband overload - in a good way. The LG spokesperson at the booth said he thought Sequans was providing the WiMAX chip. The spokesperson also said the device goes on sale for around $700 in Korea “soon”, and a similar device could land in the U.S. sometime next year.
Samsung: Samsung announced the availability of 3 mobile WiMAX devices last week for the Korean market — a WiBro smartphone, a converged mobile PC device, and a WiBro USB dongle. Sprint has also said that Samsung will develop PC cards with WiMAX and dual EVDO/WiMAX for the U.S. market.
ZTE Corporation: Sprint named ZTE as one of its suppliers of WiMAX devices including PC cards — express and USB — as well as modem products.
ZyXEL Communications: Sprint also named ZyXEL as a consumer device supplier, and ZyXEL will work on modem products. Not sure when these are coming online, but likely sometime next year.
8 comments so far
11:39 AM PT
What is apple going to do when Wiimax takes over?? The iphone is going to go to sprint.
12:00 PM PT
I’m still waiting for that Intel WiMAX PC Card they promised for last fall… !
2:36 PM PT
With $3 billion committed toward WiMax technology, Sprint does seem like it wants to get ahead in the game.
www2.sprint.com/mr/news_dtl.do?id=12960
4:28 PM PT
Where do the chipsets from Beceem Communications fit in the overall picture. The Beceem wave 2 chipsets are already being incorporated into Sanyo, which makes the handheld devices for Sprint. They also have raised over 90 mill from VCs and Intel, MOT, Samsung, NTT DoCoMo,NEC, smart money from pension funds and much more. Who are the competitors to Beceem besides Sequans ?
6:34 PM PT
nirmal, the competitors to Beceem and Sequans are the giant semiconductor guys: Intel, TI, Fujitsu, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised to see companies that had good WiFi success, like Atheros and Broadcom jump, into the game too. Sequans and Beceem have some good IP, so they could remain important players (ala Qualcomm) even amongst giants like Intel.
2:31 AM PT
Runcom is a stealthy competitor to Beceem and Sequans. Samsung’s initial Wibro deployments used the Runcom chip in the handset
5:12 PM PT
Intel has announced support for WiMAX in their Centrino successor platforms.
http://aoenet.blogspot.com/2007/04/surprise-intel-favors-wimax-over-3g-for.html
8:19 AM PT
i wonder if the US companys are going to rape its customers with contracts to get the wimax service. i currently have a sprint Usb data modem i wish i could hack to get it to work for free lol.
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