Here comes WiMax--the chips, at least

The WiMax race officially kicked off this week. Wavesat was the first to market with 802.16d chips, and its silicon is being inserted into broadband wireless equipment manufacturers' motherboards as you read this.

Wavesat may have beaten its much larger rivals Intel and Fujitsu to market, but that doesn't mean the competitive pressure is off. The first chipset may be out, but the first WiMax base stations or CPE haven't yet emerged. Wavesat's own media access controller and RF gear are still in development.

Its vendor customers have been optimizing their kits with Wavesat's reference designs since the summer, but even with the silicon in place they can't just start shipping base stations and CPE. There's still the WiMax Forum's plugfest to go through early next year and certification. According to ABI Research analyst Philip Solis, Intel and Fujitsu still have time to catch up, and more significantly they have a huge pool of customers committed to deploy their silicon in their products. Wavesat may have won the first match, Solis said but Fujitsu and Intel have the customers, who can afford to wait until the chipmakers go into full production.

"When those milestones occur, Wavesat's huge adversaries will have a much greater production capacity," Solis said in a research note.

Still there is something to be said for Wavesat's drive. According to Wavesat Sales and Marketing VP Fran Draper, Wavesat shipped its final design off to the fabrication plant almost the day after the final 802.16 spec was approved in June. If it owned its own fab the chips would have been out even sooner, but its contractor required five to six months before it could print the final silicon. It wanted desperately to beat Intel and Fujitsu to the market, and it certainly accomplished that goal.

Contact me at kfitchard@primediabusiness.com.