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In-Stat: WiMAX Chipset Sales Face Uncertain Future
[December 13, 2005]

In-Stat: WiMAX Chipset Sales Face Uncertain Future


TMCnet Associate Editor

The high-tech market research firm In-Stat reported today that competing technologies such as 3G wireless are creating uncertainties for the WiMAX chipset market. Sales could reach as high as $950 million in 2009, however, under a more conservative scenario, they may only reach $450 million, In-Stat said.



“Competing technologies include 3G technologies on the cellular side (EV-DO Release 0, A and B; HSDPA) and Wi-Fi (coupled with wireless mesh networking and MIMO enhancements within 802.11n) on the networking side,” says Gemma Tedesco, In-Stat analyst, in a press release. “Persuading the large service providers to build infrastructures to support WiMAX will be the key for WiMAX boosters, especially convincing cellular operators, who already have built out expensive 3G infrastructures.”

A recent report by In-Stat found that “despite the tremendous hype around WiMAX, the WiMAX chipset market has a relatively small number of players, as the market is quite nascent.”


“There has been much innovation in WiMAX chipsets this year,” the report states. “Heavyweights Intel and Fujitsu released WiMAX PHY and MAC System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solutions this year, along with start-ups Sequans and Wavesat. Signal processing specialist, picoChip, powered the market for macro base stations chipsets, with its software reference designs.”

The report goes on the state that Intel “has the power to drive mobile WiMAX into becoming a standard embedded feature within mobile PCs, as Intel did with Wi-Fi in its Centrino mobile platform.”

The report, “WiMAX: Wireless Super-Chips,” includes a five-year forecast of the worldwide WiMAX chipset market, broken out by equipment type. In-Stat includes chipsets that adhere to Fixed WiMAX (802.16-2004), Mobile WiMAX (802.16e) and WiBro (South Korea’s mobile broadband service based on Mobile WiMAX). Also included are those chipsets that are WiMAX-ready (and adhere to 802.16-2004) that shipped, or will ship in 2005 and 2006, although not certified by the WiMAX Forum.

The report also contains analysis of WiMAX chipset technology, market drivers and challenges, and brief profiles of chipset vendors.

For more information visit
www.in-stat.com.

Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit
Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.

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