Research and Markets: More Than 30 Million of the Nation's 48 Million Population Carry Wireless Internet-Capable Cell Phones According to this New Report.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c40007) has announced the addition of "WiMAX Market Intelligence Report" to their offering.

This market report analyzes and forecasts 19 market segments likely to adopt WiMAX. The report includes analysis of WiMAX technologies and alliance development, as well as an evaluation of current technology, geographical hotspots of activity, and corporate developments.

It is written primarily for companies who are in the process of evaluating the WiMAX Market (802.16a, 802.16d-2004, and 802.16e).

Outlook:

WiMAX is a standardized wireless technology designed to offer connectivity in a metropolitan area network (MAN). Prior to the emergence of WiMAX, proprietary technologies such as LMDS and MMDS occupied this segment, with varying degrees of success due to lack of client device installations, high base station costs, and the general barrier-to-market-entry encumbering all proprietary solutions in a new market.

The IEEE 802.16 standard (the first WiMAX incarnation) was published in 2001 and was followed by the 802.16a standard early in 2003. Both these standards support data rates up to 75 Mbps with a maximum range of 50 km. 802.16 covers frequencies from 10 GHz to 66 GHz; the frequency range of 802.16a's is between 2 GHz and 11 GHz and does not require line-of-sight transmission.

WiMAX will enter the communications market eventually, in spite of potential architectural issues that arise when integrating multiple radio types into a small package, such as a mobile phone. Motorola's mobile device plans include integrating WiMAX into their complete phone portfolio. Nextel is among the lucky recipients. Motorola appears to be halfway through the process, but in the time frame of the next 18 months the 802.16 profile is not likely to be mature enough to support existing end products. In addition, the significant geographic areas that have true, unimpeded, drivers for mobile WiMAX are those with populations that coincidentally use pubic transportation on a broad scale. The US, which represents roughly 1/3 of the world market for cell phones, is not a predominant public transportation consumer.

Industry Description:

While promising opportunities exist in areas and countries where wiring is exorbitant or impossible to provide, the necessary WiMAX infrastructure is by no means cost-effective in all such areas and communities. Finding its best opportunity, with regard to cost-effectiveness, in outlying but semi-urban suburbia at home, or abroad in countries where power grids are non-existent, the market for WiMAX is limited in this sense, and, despite its promise, is a long way from home base yet. Unlike ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4) or Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11x), both of which are upgrades and replacements of existing network infrastructures, the predominant market for WiMAX (IEEE 802.16d-2004) is in new infrastructure installations. This has likely been a barrier to an earlier success, but it seems that now WiMAX has finally found its way into the mainstream of market acceptance.

At the same time, the struggle is not yet quite over; 'mobile WiMAX' (IEEE 802.16e) is rapidly gaining ground, threatening to leap-frog the recently defunct 802.20. The real eye-opening realization is that the tremendous interest in IEEE 802.16e is threatening the growth of WiMAX fixed applications. The IEEE 802.16e specification can address mobile applications and stationary applications but WiMAX is today largely limited to stationary segments. If investing infrastructure capital in high-speed wireless for metropolitan area network applications, why would it make sense to invest in two technologies when it is possible to invest in only one? This last factor is the locus of major expenditure in creating the ubiquitous WiMAX grid. Most of the companies developing components for this market are hedging their bets, however, and bringing to market dual-band products that enable deployment of both mobile and fixed WiMAX environments.

In the US there are obstacles of a different sort. If other countries are hamstrung by regulatory hurdles, corruption, and/or lacking in economic maturity. Given that the market structure is demand-driven, the delay or sluggish interest is caused by the absence of a market driver. One need only look at the example of Wi-Fi as an indicator to be repeated again and again in whatever next big thing is coming along. The first move that elevated the visibility of Wi-Fi into market cognizance came with its name change from IEEE 802.11 to WECA-compatible to Wi-Fi. The second was that Apple included Wi-Fi as 'airport' option in its 1999 laptops, but not until Intel launched its Centrino chip in conjunction with Wi-Fi in their laptops, did Wi-Fi catch on. It was, of course, dependent on a growing availability of hotspots, which was, in turn, driven by Intel's $200,000 Wi-Fi marketing campaign. But there is an ancillary caution to this: the hot-spot explosion was anything but a financial boom, as service providers realized that little profit was to be had from hotspot offerings, for both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Given this, and the fact that at this point in time there is little visible interest in WiMAX on the part of the general population, it is most likely that in the US WiMAX will play a minor market role, and mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) will quickly come from behind, and eclipse and take the lion's share of the WiMAX market within a very short time.

Intel is today moving to 3rd world countries with WiMAX technology. In Nigeria, a population of roughly 130 million, fixed WiMAX is beginning to take off with six licensees introducing services, with 13 more in the works all in the 3.5 GHz band. The topology of Nigeria is largely flat, hence WIMAX will fare well in the environment and, all things being equal, could become a significant factor in the economic revitalization and modernization of the country. Standardization and interoperability are key to a successful integration of WiMAX into products as evidenced by the existence of the hitherto customary collaboration between the IEEE and technology industry alliances, in this case the WIMAX Forum.

Keeping in mind that WiMAX is capable of proprietary applications on top of the IEEE802.16/e standard, there is not likely to be an end to the search for the easiest, fastest, user-friendliest, always 'on' status in the wireless high speed arena. Rather than being a disruptive technology, WiMAX is evolutionary, which means that it is likely to graduate rapidly from fixed to mobile, it's IEEE802.16e version. Already WiMAX mobile is not the only contender in the high speed wireless arena; it has a rival in WiBro, - the Korean version of mobile WiMAX. Licensed by South Korea's KT Corp. (KTC), WiBro allows Internet access at any traveling speed, making download links possible even if moving at 60 mi/hr. Yet already a new wireless mobile communication service on the horizon in Korea, the 3.5 generation technology HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), is capable of being more than six times faster in data transfer. Which means that downloading an MP3 music file is 10 seconds today, it would take two seconds with HSDPA, and to download data from a station could theoretically be as fast as 14 mbps, though more likely 2 to 7 mbps. And while most advanced countries are still, often slowly, rolling out broadband, South Korea is ready to move to the next level which is nationwide 50-100Mbps FTTH and mobile access to a single IP-based network capable of handling and offering every thinkable service, especially multimedia services.

All this to emphasize that Korea is a powerhouse with regard to Internet access. Broadband with 8-10Mbps now reaches 70-80% of the homes and businesses in South Korea, which means there is a burgeoning demand for better and faster data communications. More than 30 million of the nation's 48 million population carry wireless Internet-capable cell phones, and hence it is simply the next step for the government to maintain the momentum and to deploy WiBro today, and most likely HSDPA tomorrow.

Therefore it is understandable that South Korea's Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have invested heavily in WiMAX development, and all of the country's telecom firms are members of the WiMAX forum, including now Samsung. South Korea has also reached an agreement with the IEEE 802.16 Working Group on the specifications of WiBro. Other members of the WiMAX Forum are mindful of the fact that South Korea is moving into a leading position, ready to export its know-how. In the US, Texas Instruments just announced the completion of three chip sets for both WiMAX fixed and mobile applications; the fabless semiconductor company, Athena, also chimed in with an RF transceiver that supports both WiMAX and WiBRO. GigaBeam and Adaptix showcased their WiMAX and WiBro technology at the Broadband Wireless World Forum in Las Vegas in April. But Samsung is likely to be the link that will bridge the technological divide between Korea and the ROW, of which the US, by all appearances, seems to be one.

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