I know we hit up some WiMAX news earlier today, but I just read Sprint’s official press release regarding plans for WiMAX. You can read the full release right here, but I want to highlight one tidbit that I almost missed:
"PC manufacturers Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Panasonic and Toshiba haveexpressed intent to embed WiMAX into their next generation IntelCentrino-based laptops and ultra mobile PCs in 2008, so these devicescan connect with the Xohm WiMAX network."
Now when I look at that list of computer manufacturers, only Asus has a current entry in the UMPC space. Granted, I could be reading into this too much but is it possible that we’ll see a UMPC offering in 2008 from one or more of the other players named? Regardless, the whole prospect of WiMAX is sounding more appealing to me by the day. I’ll also go out on a limb regarding the idea of an Apple PDA: if we see it, it won’t be until next year and I suspect it will have embedded WiMAX (Baxter Peak) like the next Nokia Internet Tablet. That rids the device of any cellular ties to contracts, won’t cannibalize iPhone sales, and will offer fallback to standard WiFi along with Intel processing power.
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