Archive for the ‘wimax’ Category

It seems like it has been forever since we heard about the WiMAX equipped N810, and yet the device wasn’t made available… until now that is. Probably owing the delay to the fact that the WiMAX network was hardly even a reality until a few weeks ago when they started testing WiMAX in Baltimore, Maryland (or they might have been waiting until October to match the black and orange color scheme…). The N810 WiMAX edition appears to be finally purchasable directly from Nokia at a price of $443 (after an instant $50 discount), which is right around the launch price of the original N810. The N810 WiMAX edition is exactly the same as the N810 aside from its black color and WiMAX capability.

Jenn from Pocketables tells us that WiMAX’s next stops will be in Washington DC and Chicago, followed by Dallas, Fort Worth, Providence, Boston, and Philadelphia. As far as I have heard, WiMAX tests are going well, and Nokia might be able to cash-in by having one of the first readily available WiMAX equipped products.

Not living in the U.S. puts me at a slight disadvantage in understanding the mobile Internet market out there but my head is going through a number of scenarios today after reading about the possible, but likely, $3.2Bn investment plan to prop-up the WiMax effort in the U.S.

Intel, a silicon manufacturer, a WiMax chipset manufacturer and mobile Internet platform specialist is giving $1bn. Google, an Internet search, advertising and services company, is giving $500m. Comcast, a cable company, is giving over 1 billion dollars. Time Warner, cable company and owner of AOL (AIM, Weblogs inc., ICQ, Winamp, Mapquest etc) is throwing in $500m and Bright House, a triple-play company is putting in $100m. Where? Into a joint venture that brings Sprint and Clearwire together into a new voice and data company valued at around $12bn. [More after the break...]

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Although I like the N810 design, I’ve never been a personal fan of the whole product and, objectively speaking, I think it under-performs for the average consumer. The keyboard is poor, the processing power is limited and the application suite doesn’t flow in terms of design and UI. Its not ready for consumer prime time yet although to be honest, I don’t think Nokia are too worried about that. It’s more of an early adopters product and it seems that many of them are extremely happy with it. The WiMax version has an even tighter niche market by nature of the delayed $5bn Sprint/Xohm network rollout that only seems to be hitting a handful of cities in 2008 now but it’s interesting to see how much the device will cost. How much of a premium is the average punter going to have to pay for the WiMax hardware?

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According to a Boy-Genius four-liner, there’s a rumor that the Nokia N810 will launch with WiMax soon. I don’t see many people jumping up and down with joy though. A clutch of users in Baltimore perhaps but even these people are still wondering how much it’s going to cost.

WiMax on the N810 is at most, a demonstrator for the Xohm ecosystem so I personally think it’s one we can ignore as end users. If Nokia wanted to make a peoples product they would drop a 2.5G modem inside and partner with someone to make a $20 per month contact but I doubt that would be on the cards for this generation of the device. Nokia have a lot to do to bring the UI and software standards up to consumer levels so it wouldn’t make sense to push the tablet into the mainstream just yet. It would just end up with a bunch of unhappy customers expecting an iPhone-esque experience.

Its good to see WiMax gaining momentum. God knows America needs something that will allow them to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of mobile connectivity. It has been really interesting to hear the negative stateside response to Ericsson’s comment about hotspots dying and it highlights how far behind the infrastructure is in comparison with Europe and a lot of Asian cities. In Germany, T-Mobile have just announced a pay-as-you go 7.2mbps 3.5G deal which undercuts their own hotspot product. As they are the biggest hotspot provider in Germany, it gives us some idea of where the carriers think this is going! Go WiMax!

N810 with WiMax launching April 1st.[Rumor]