WiMAX will be successful, as a fringe technology

A recent Infonetics press release says “WiMAX has gained such momentum across so many regions that it is no longer sensible to suggest that WiMAX growth will be flattened by the emergence of LTE in the next few years."

Probably true, but it's also clear WiMAX will never reach the scale of either mainstream wireless family, i.e., WiFi or GSM/3GSM.  By comparison with these giants, WiMAX will be a fringe operation.  The critical issue is volume, and what counts is the wireless technology brand, not the technology itself.

Both WiFi and GSM/3GSM have already evolved through multiple generations of technology while maintaining backwards compatibility and thus interoperability.  Within the GSM community, there may be no commercial LTE subscribers as yet and relatively few HSPA subscribers, but more than a billion GSM/3GSM devices are manufactured each year with individual chip set product lines running multi-hundred million units per year.  WiFi chipsets also run at hundred-million units per year rates.  These volumes (and the guarantee of interoperability) mean GSM/3GSM and WiFi devices will always be substantially lower cost than anything WiMAX aspires to.  [Note:  today there are slightly less the 2 million WiMAX subscribers while optimistic projections suggest there will be more than 100 million in 2012.]  WiMAX may have technology leadership, but it can't catch up.  WiFi and GSM are the wireless families that will prosper, each in it's sphere – WiFi for unlicensed, GSM for licensed spectrum.

WiMAX will benefit from technology specific licensing in some emerging markets, i.e., valuable spectrum tied to specific technologies,  So WiMAX will survive, even while it's more expensive than LTE or WiFi.  As for market share, the optimistic parallel is "CDMA cellular", i.e. IS-95/ CDMA One/ CDMA 2000.  CDMA had technology leadership and it managed to capture nearly 20% of the 2G cellular market at it's peak, but it could never overtake GSM and, today, major operators are jumping ship to join the 3GSM crowd.

There may be a decade of contention, but in the end, WiMAX will die or be absorbed into the GSM brand.

Comments

[sayen]

There is only one problem : That you assume LTE is going to be as successful.

Moving from 3.5G to LTE is a big change; moving from WCDMA/CDMA2000 to OFDMA. Moving to pure IP is another big since most 3G network are still on R4/R5 and pure IP post-R6 networks are rare (not much vendor anyone at economical price point). This means a huge capital expenses, overhauling almost every part of the network, from the ASN to the core.

Therefore, it is very likely LTE will take a path of 2G to 3G ... going to take a extremely long period of time before any telco will jump into it. It is inside that limbo that M.WIMAX may have a chance...And if it is not successful by then, then M.WIMAX has no chance.

[brough]

Sayen, You are absolutely correct that the transition from 3GSM (i.e. W-CDMA & HSPA) to LTE is a complete technology discontinuity (e.g. CDMA modulation to OFDMA modulation). However, the transition from GSM to 3GSM was equally wrenching (e.g. TDMA modulation to CDMA modulation). The difficulty of the GSM to 3GSM transition was a major reason why 3GSM was 4-5 years late to the market. But once there were handsets that could simultaneously support GSM & 3GSM, 3GSM won. GSM had 80+% market share and thus was the low cost system. 3GSM is following in that track. Today, GSM+3GSM together have 88% market share.

LTE will take years longer than currently projected (e.g. first commercial deployments in 2012 and volume deployments 2015-2020), but by 2020 (maybe a lot sooner) it will be the clear leader. I like WiMAX and I agree it's ahead technically, but it's going to be a 10% technology not an 80+% technology.