Last week I attended the WiMAX Forum Congress in Fort Lauderdale. The attendance and exhibitor numbers were quite low, and I was told that this was a much smaller event than last year’s, which is not surprising considering the cuts to travel and marketing budgets made by most companies this year. What was, however, surprising was the almost total absence of WiMAX Forum staff at the event, considering the WiMAX Forum owns the show. Another surprise was the complete absence of active companies in the WiMAX space such as Alvarion, Motorola, Aperto, Redline and others.
On the bright side, the quality of the speakers was very good and included the usual suspects such as Clearwire and Intel, but also speakers representing important companies such as Dell and Kodak.
US WiMAX operators were also well represented, with the likes of Xanadoo, Digital Bridge and Skyriver providing useful insights on their current deployment status, expectations vis-à-vis the broadband stimulus package, and their continuing need for greater availability of devices such as multiband radios from the vendor community.
There were no major announcements at the show other than Beceem announcing the launch of “4G Turbo” - uplink performance improvements to its WiMAX chips. The 4G Turbo works with every Wave 2-compliant 4G/ WiMAX base station. The improvements provide Dual Antenna Transmit diversity for maximum uplink performance under all signal conditions, and are claimed to deliver a gain of approximately 2dB compared to other chipsets in the market. Beceem also claims to be on track to ship 3 million chips, capturing more than 70% market share of the 4.7 million WiMAX chipset market (the number of chipsets shipped in 2009 according to the Marevedis-Reveal Wireless market report “WiMAX Wave2 Subscriber Station Chipset Vendors - Competitive Analysis.”)
Green Packet introduced two new products during the event. Its new indoor CPE the “Tower” integrates WiMAX, Wi-Fi and a voice gateway into a single product. Combining Wi-Fi into the product allows subscribers to place the device near a window were they can get the best WiMAX signal and provide an instant Wi-Fi hotspot. For mobility, Green Packet introduced the “Shuttle” which is an improvement on the USB dongle concept and includes a 5-foot USB cable and a suction cup to attach the device to a window. Both products include omni-directional antennas and improved DB gain compared to their predecessor products.
The number of activated emerging wireless devices including smartphones, wireless CE, and enterprise M2M applications will grow from 53.5 million in 2008 to 268 million by 2013, according to Sprint (citing various sources). Smart grids will be a large part of that M2M opportunity. The current grid in North America is based on technology that was invented more than one hundred years ago. Today, it is inefficient, congested, and incapable of meeting the future energy needs of the Information Economy without changes in operations and investment of significant capital over the next several decades. To meet the challenges of the future, the grid must undergo a transition from a centralized, producer-controlled network to a decentralized, user-interactive one. Not only will the technology involved in the electric grid change, but the entire business model of the industry will change too.
The latest development is the concept of smart grids - an intelligent IP overlay over the electricity grid, with sensors and other equipment. This will allow utilities to manage their networks much better, limit electricity loss, prevent outages, loadshed and provide customers with in-house information and tools (smart meters) to better manage their own energy use. In addition, utilities will be able to reduce their carbon emissions, which will offer interesting opportunities on the carbon trading market.
CLICK TO ENLARGE
2009 was a busy year for the Maravedis team. We published 12 in-depth market reports covering all aspects of the emerging 4G industry, from applications, to network deployments, to chipsets. We interviewed over 100 operators from both the WiMAX and LTE camps, dozens of regulators and equipment vendors, and continue to lead the 4G market research industry. In 2009 we also expanded the team to prepare for 2010. I am proud of the work done by the team of analysts and the marketing department in these difficult times. If you are interested in receiving our research calendar for 2010, please send a request to info@maravedis-bwa.com
We hope you will enjoy this last newsletter of 2009 and wish all of you the best holiday season – we look forward to seeing you in 2010!
Adlane Fellah
Maravedis CEO & Founder
For more information, contact the author at afellah@maravedis-bwa.com
Copyright © 2009 by Maravedis Inc. All Rights Reserved.
No reproduction without consent.
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