Dean Bubley

First Out of the Gate: WiMax Vs. LTE

I disagree. Fairly few products will get WiMAX pre-integrated - there's too much wishful thinking about this, which doesn't fit with commercial reality.

WiFi operates in unlicenced spectrum, and the testing/conformance burden for equipment manufacturers is *much* lower than for WiMAX. I can't see there being many cameras, game consoles etc that have WiMAX. The problem is one of scale - most countries will not have national WiMAX networks in the foreseeable, and those that do have them will mostly be in unfavourable frequency bands with poor indoor coverage.

I reckon about 1% of global laptop shipments in 2009 will have WiMAX, and I reckon the figure will struggle to get to 15% even in a few years time.

The main competition for WiMAX isn't really LTE, it's HSPA, which is already pretty widespread. This is the whole thrust of my post - LTE won't be mainstream until 2013 onwards.... but 3.5G cellular is already.

DeanB

With WiMAX and 3G on Your PC, What Will Happen?

Thanks Stricklybiz

Fair point - although that's possibly because I spend most of my time looking at the mobile industry, for whom pretty much all the computers of interest are notebooks. Certainly I hear a lot of folk in the wireless business talking about PCs as a synonym for laptop or notebook.

Another case of the tech industry using the same words in different ways, in different contexts.... (you should see the range of possible uses of the word "application")

As it happens, it wouldn't surprise me to see more desktops getting used with mobile modules or external modems as well.

Dean

Just How Late Is Nokia with HSUPA devices?

I agree that it's not immediately obvious what the applications for UPA are - most of the ones I can think of are not necessarily operator-friendly: VoIP, filesharing, using the phone as a web server etc.

On the other hand, it could be used for *operator* VoIP or other rich communications, managed P2P, decent-quality realtime video uploads & as a means to compete with home DSL/cable in some places.

Some operators have been quite aggressive deploying UPA - especially T-Mobile in Europe, Vodafone, some of the 3 subsids, AT&T etc.

Either way, it's unusual for Nokia not to have at least *some* devices supporting it before its main competitors do. It's been first to market with radio technologies like UMTS900 before.