Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

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Why Does WiMAX Matter?


By Rhonda Wickham
October 13, 2006
Wireless Week

http://www.wirelessweek.com/article/CA6380800.html

The wireless infrastructure market represents about a $40 billion market. Wireless as a whole is a market at least times times that value. By contrast, WiMAX is expected to represent perhaps 1 percent of that. So why does WiMAX matter? According to Rupert Baines, vice president of marketing for picoChip, there are five reasons WiMAX is important.

1. It is the first global standard. Looking around WiMAX World, it is obvious it is very international with companies offering products from around the world. It is totally different than GSM or CDMA evolution, which pitted different parts of the world against each other.

2. WiMAX changes the traditional telecom or wireless business model. WiMAX drives the pace of change with open interfaces and re-use of standards.

3. WiMAX is the road to 4G. Baines said 4G is going to be OFDM, MIMO and all-IP. WiMAX is the first standard to deliver all of those. It is the breakthrough that all of those other markets and technologies could not do.

4. WiMAX treats voice as just another packet stream with flat-rate pricing.

5. The elephant in the room is the intellectual property. Who owns the patents? Who owns OFDM? According to Baines, there are roughly 1,400 patents on OFDM. He said Samsung owns about one-third of them while Qualcomm comes in second.

On the down side, Baines said he thinks there are close to 30 companies making chipsets for WiMAX. If you recognize that companies need to make between $20 to $50 million in order to pay for the development of the technology, he said it is obvious there is a bloodbath coming.

In the end, Baines said it takes a long time to get technology right. In fact, he said it always takes 5 years to reach adequate volume. “Even with Sprint’s vision, volume is not real until 2009,” he said.