| WiMAX re-mix? |
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| Wednesday, 01 August 2007 | |
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All change for supply industry predicts new study…
According to a new analysis from IMS Research, the WiMAX supply industry is set for a dramatic shake-up. As attention shifts to the mobile (IEEE 802.16e-2005) version of the technology the dominance of vendors schooled in the provision of static broadband wireless access (BWA) is to be challenged by players from the cell phone sector of the telecoms business. And this, says ‘The Worldwide Market for WiMAX & Competing Products – 2007 Edition’, applies to infrastructure, customer premise equipment (CPE) and ICs.
IMS reckons that to date the WiMAX market - such as it is - has been dominated by those suppliers strong in IEEE 802.16d-2004 BWA, namely: Alvarion, Airspan, Redline and Aperto. However, says the research company, the WiMAX market will quickly move to 802.16e and mobile WiMAX, and here suppliers of traditional cellular infrastructure are well equipped to serve. Expect companies such as Motorola, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks and Nortel Networks to challenge the BWA-oriented vendors listed above. On the CPE front WiMAX’s roots in BWA, where terminals and infrastructure are supplied by the same manufacturer, the same companies (Alvarion, Airspan, Aperto and Redline) dominate the market. But IMS reasons that for mobile and nomadic WiMAX really to take off, a large and independent CPE supplier industry is required. This means that the dominant CPE suppliers of the future may well be the leading handset suppliers. This includes companies such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung and LG. In addition, those dominating laptop PC supply (such as Dell, HP, Lenovo and Acer) and those dominating residential gateway supply (such as Linksys, D-Link, Thomson, Netgear, Belkin, Scientific Atlanta and Arris) are also well positioned to be leading WiMAX CPE suppliers.
Considering ICs, with the exception of Intel and Fujitsu, IMS notes that the companies that have made significant in-roads to date are predominantly WiMAX-focused start-ups such as Beceem, Sequans, Runcom and Wavesat Wireless. However, as the WiMAX IC market has started to ramp up the leading traditional wireless IC suppliers have entered the market, for example NXP and Infineon on the RF side. This trend is apparently set to continue with the leading cellular IC suppliers, such as the above, TI, MediaTek and Analog Devices, and the leading Wi-Fi IC suppliers, such as Intel, Marvel, Atheros, Broadcom, Airgo and Conexant, being the best candidates for WiMAX leadership. This is likely even though many have yet to signal their intent to enter the market.
IMS concludes that this does not mean that today’s market winners will not be winners tomorrow: they will just have to fight for their position.
And in other WiMAX news Nortel Networks, one of the new breed of infrastructure suppliers name-checked by IMS, has launched a ‘cross-market collaboration’ with broadband enterprise wireless service provider Urban Wimax to prove, ahead of the UK’s spectrum auction in early 2008, the technical deliverability of 4G mobile WiMAX in mature 3G markets such as Western Europe. The collaboration, through which companies will be brought together to construct and trial a user-ready WiMAX service, is intended to demonstrate that the technology and a proven delivery chain are in place to provide the UK with a robust 4G service using WiMAX connectivity.
“The potential for 4G using WiMAX connectivity is enormous. If the
John Williamson |
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