Despite the doubts raised by the backers of Long Term Evolution, such as Ericsson Chief Technology Officer Hakan Eriksson, as to whether or not WiMAX is truly 4G, the technology’s champions believe it has a future. Today their belief can be backed by numbers. According to Infonetics Research, the demand for WiMAX-related gear will increase to just shy of $5 billion in 2013 from less than $500 million in 2007.
WiMAX equipment sales were about $255 million in the second quarter of 2009, thanks to a jump in demand in India and the U.S. Alvarion led the market during the quarter, followed by Motorola. The number of WiMAX subscribers is expected to near 140 million worldwide by 2013. In a recent conversation, WiMAX Forum President Dr. Mohammad Shakouri said that WiMAX’s future was in emerging telecom markets such as India, Russia and Brazil.
Om,
We don’t have to go that far to emerging countries, wait till 2010, wimax will be available in most of the US cities.
Very interesting. However in 2 years of its existence, WiMax is ditched by its early adopters [Reliance and Tata ] in favor of EVDO. BSNL is the third one.
Data suggests 500,000 EVDO subscribers [within 5 months] compared to 100,000 WiMax. 1 mn EVDO expected to be added by Reliance, Tata and BSNL within the next 12 months.
Another operator likely to join the EVDO based broadband service fray, l’m waiting for their CTO to respond.