Mobile WiMAX sales to surpass fixed WiMAX in two years

6 September 2006 News

In the past year, the stationary form of WiMAX (fixed WiMAX or 802.16-2004) has seen steady adoption in the marketplace. But the mobile version, 802.16-2005, will be here sooner than many people think.

To be technically and economically viable, mobile WiMAX ICs must hit 'sweet spots' on a number of parameters. Says Alan Varghese, principal analyst at ABI Research, "ABI Research sees fixed WiMAX sales hitting a peak in 2007 and then levelling off. Mobile WiMAX will start to see deployments in 2007, and the crossover point between the two will be late in 2008. Considering that it takes a year to design ASICs and then more time to design them into end-equipment, vendors up and down the value chain need to be discussing the required trade-offs in their strategy meetings now."

Performance, power consumption, and cost requirements for WiMAX ICs become much more challenging on the mobile platform. MIMO will be required, but it means increased circuitry, so IC vendors will have to trade off MIMO performance for die area, power usage, and price.

For information see www.abiresearch.com

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