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January 19, 2005

Chip Makers Beware

By Nancy Gohring

A recent IDC report urges chip makers to proceed with caution into the WiMax industry: While the analyst seems generally upbeat about the prospects for WiMax, he also advises chip makers to be careful before jumping into the market. He suggests they make sure that they are confident that operators are interested in WiMax.

He describes three main markets for WiMax: hotspot backhaul, rural markets, and the broad mobile market for 802.16e. But the hotspot backhaul and rural markets are only niche markets so the big question for chip makers is whether or not the broader market will materialize.

That seems to be the million dollar question here. Actually, the broader WiMax market could develop in a backwards fashion. If the 802.16e spec turns out good and Intel succeeds in pushing WiMax into laptops, that may encourage operators to build the networks. That’s opposite of how this usually works. Typically, even in the mobile world, the client devices follow the networks. Here, it may take embedded client devices to convince operators that there is a real market of users out there.

Posted by nancyg at January 19, 2005 11:58 AM

Categories: Chips

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