The cellular M2M market will be impacted by the growing momentum behind the deployment of WiMAX as a next-generation WWAN communications technology. WiMAX is even more spectrally efficient and cost-effective to operate in carrier networks when compared with W-CDMA and CDMA EV-DO, making WiMAX very suitable for low data rate, low ARPU M2M applications— when and where WiMAX connectivity is available.

Sam Lucero, ABI research senior analyst, states, “Sprint and Clearwire are the two most significant service providers deploying WiMAX in the United States. Sprint, a CDMA-based operator, has selected WiMAX as its path to 4G service offerings. Sprint will work with Clearwire—a Craig McCaw startup that has received $600 M in venture backing from Intel and $300 M from Motorola—to provide joint coverage to each other’s respective customers on the national WiMAX networks deployed by the two companies.

Sprint is rapidly deploying WiMAX infrastructure in North America and believes WiMAX is well-suited to deliver cost-effective, wide area M2M services: a view point borne out by ABI Research analysis.” There is also growing interest in Europe in the development of WiMAX. Furthermore, there are indications suggesting an interest in employing WiMAX for M2M applications such as Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). ABI Research continuously monitors and evaluates these trends. Sprint and Clearwire are only two among a number of interested parties. Lucero adds, “Intel is a key member of a developing WiMAX ecosystem that includes network infrastructure equipment vendors, Motorola and Samsung as well as CPE vendors such as ZyXEL and Accton. Intel expects nearly a few dozen operators to have deployed WiMAX by 2012.” Additionally, municipal Wi-Fi can be deployed at very low cost and is well suited for select M2M applications, such as AMI, public safety telematics and video surveillance. The recent ABI Research study, “3G Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Communications,” examines the market for cellular 3G M2M from the perspective of cellular embedded module vendors and analyzes the impact that WiMAX and municipal Wi-Fi will have on market development. It forms part of three annual ABI Research services: M2M, Mobile Operators and Mobile Devices.