Portable WiMAX devices are coming to market now as Samsung showed recently with two new products - a smartphone/PDA and an Ultra Mobile Windows PC, plus two accessories that will turn any laptop or desktop into a WiMAX compatible computer.
The product launches illustrate that the rest of the WiMAX world is not going to wait while Sprint and Clearwire play marbles, and that the US and Europe could rapidly fall behind in mobile broadband as badly as they have in wireline broadband. It also suggests that Google had better be working to make some Android-based phones WiMAX compatible if it wants to reach a global market; and that the ultimate network for iPhones, iPod Touches and other such media devices has to be WiMAX, not just Wi-Fi.
Samsung showed the devices for WiBro, its pre-standard technology which is being adapted to comply fully with 802.16e standards. The products are a WiBro smartphone (SPH-M8100), an Ultra Mobile PC running Windows XP with a full keyboard (SPH-P9000), a USB dongle (SPH-H1200) for laptops and desktops and a PCMCIA card for laptops.
The P9000 provides voice and multimedia data communications via WiBro. It has a full keyboard, an MP3 player, VoD and a camera. Running Windows XP, it can be used as a PC.
The SPH-M8100 is a PDA /smartphone with wireless internet capabilities, voice telephony and video telephony services through WiBro and CDMA 1x EV-DO. The slider phone has a 2.8-inch color touch-screen display, a TV-out connection, an MMC card slot and two cameras - a two-megapixel camera and a VGA camera for video phone calls. It also has Bluetooth with A2DP, 128MB ROM, 64MB RAM memory and Microsoft's view-and-edit function. The USB Dongle allows PCs to access either a WiBro or an HSDPA cellular network.
Where WiBro/WiMAX is available, Samsung promises mobile access speeds up to 13Mbps in the Seoul deployment. Theoretically, WiBro/WiMAX allows for maximum data throughput of 30-50Mbps.
Samsung says the WiBro network is available in all parts of Seoul, including at 17 universities and on four subway lines. With the new devices and the increased reach of WiBro in South Korea, Samsung expects WiBro to gain momentum and expand the market. There are currently about 70,000 WiBro subscribers in and around Seoul, although operator KT has so far been disappointed with relatively slow growth in uptake.
Last month, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) approved mobile WiMAX as a global standard for 3G networks. The Korea Times reported that WiBro is expected to become a $41.4bn business by 2010, according to a forecast from the Korean government-funded Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).