Summary
There are not too many vendors in the WiMAX market that have the ability to effectively compete in the LTE. WiMAX shall remain a niche for last mile access.
Analysis
Most major wireless equipment vendors never committed (i.e. Ericsson), have abandoned (i.e. NSN) or soon will (Motorola and ALU) the WiMAX technology and will remain focus on LTE. The ecosystem for WiMAX is very small and more and more is becoming the technology of choice for the fixed line carriers to provide a cost effective last mile broadband access. Most major carriers that have fixed and mobile operations (i.e. AT&T, Verizon, Deutsche Telecom, etc.) and major mobile carriers (i.e. Vodafone) have committed to LTE. As a result, the overall addressable market for LTE is much bigger than WiMAX. Only a few equipment vendors will have the ability to provide competitive solutions in the WiMAX market. Among them are Alvarion and Redline Communitcations. Huawei is also very active, but Huawei has every telecom technology that one can imagine!
It is highly unlikely that any of the niche WiMAX vendors will dabble in with LTE since one needs the footprint in the mobile radio technology (2G and 3G) to take advantage of and getting in this late in the market will be suicidal!
Most successful LTE vendors have a solid turn key solution for LTE that goes beyond the radio and include IMS core, evolved packet core (EPC), and applications. These turn key players are going to key the small vendors out of this market.
This author consults with leading institutions through GLG
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
