Mobile Wimax to take third slot

MOBILE WIMAX will become the third major purveyor of mobile broadband after Cdma2000 EV-DO in second place and HSPA (high speed 3G/W-CDMA).

That's according to Mike Roberts, author of Informa's Future mobile broadband report. He also makes a very brave predication about the Chinese mobile broadband market.

He reckons that by 2012, there will be close to 50 million subscribers in China using TD-SCDMA. That's China's locally developed version of 3G.

A brave forecast considering that there's no real commercial TD-SCDMA network in operation right now. So that's zero to 50 million in four years. That'll make some handset vendors very happy indeed.

Roberts says that, "Mobile WiMAX will be the leading next-generation system based on OFDMA and MIMO in 2012 given its two-year head-start in the market."

However, it will be overtaken in the long run by LTE (Long Term Evolution) which is what operators of W-CDMA/HSPA based services are calling their planned 4G networks.

Roberts also adds that "Mobile broadband will represent close to half of total mobile service revenues in 2012." That will make it one of the most strategically important segments in the whole the mobile industry.

By 2012 mobile broadband will be generating over $400 billion in service revenues. The INQ wonders what figures he has for text/SMS messaging? Given that no-one saw SMS coming, will it be possible to accurately predict its demise? µ <p>

L'INQ
Informa