4G World: Beceem numbers show WiMax devices coming in volumes

Chipset sales always precede device sales by a few quarters, and if Beceem Communications third-quarter sales results are any indication, a flood of WiMax devices are set to hit the market soon. Beceem this week revealed that it shipped more than 1 million mobile WiMax chipsets in the third quarter alone and is on target to ship more than 1 million chips in the fourth quarter.

“This is not a fluke,” said Lars Johnsson, vice president of marketing and business development for Beceem. “The beginning of the year was stagnant, but several things have occurred since then. UQ Communications launched in Japan in July, and Clearwire and Sprint have been very aggressive.”

WiMax device shipments are ramping up and staying up, Johnsson said. He estimated the total market for IEEE 802.16e mobile WiMax chips to fall between 3.5 million and 4 million, which might seem small when compared to the cellular markets but represents a huge leap forward for WiMax.

Evidence that WiMax device sales were increasing came from other sectors as well. Motorola (NYSE:MOT), which uses Beceem chips in many of its laptop cards and residential modems, shipped its 1 millionth device in recent weeks, doubling its total in just six months.

The WiMax device market has been dominated by PC cards and residential gateways, which what Beceem and Motorola focus on today. In addition to supplying Motorola, Beceem provides WiMax chips to ZTE and several original design manufacturers in Asia. The other major device category in WiMax has been embedded laptops, a chip market dominated by Intel (NASDAQ: INTC).