Sadly, the report, called "WiMax: Going the Distance," also suggests that the fixed wireless boom may come too late for some of the companies currently involved with the technology.
"With all the excitement around 802.16 and WiMax, it would be easy for the industry to forget the most important thing: how vendors make a profit," writes the report's author, Gabriel Brown. "Unfortunately the prognosis is dire. The patient is barely hanging on."
Table 1: BWA Profitability (Loss) By Vendor, By Quarter ($ Millions)
The spike in profitability in the third quarter 2003 for P-Com Inc. in fact relates to a capital infusion into the normally loss-making company.
Even though the coming of WiMax is expected to be a tonic for the fixed wireless industry in general, the smaller vendors in the market may not be the main beneficiaries. For, as Brown notes, major vendors such as Alcatel SA, Motorola Inc., and Siemens AG are now also starting to focus on WiMax.
"There are simply too many small vendors in the BWA sector," writes Brown. "Consolidation and business failure look inevitable."
Redline is private and doesn't produce quarterly reports. It just announced $18 million in funding: http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=56738
WiMax will help some companies make money and a standard (commodity) MAC and PHY is obviously a good thing. If you're in the fixed wireless access business and you're making a loss, what else are you going to do but adopt WiMax?
The way I see it, WiMax will become a baseline for many types of application -- with vendors deciding to optimize products for self-install wireless DSL or enterprise access, for example.
The report seems to beg the question why, if vendors aren't going to make any money out of WiMax, will they bother in the first place? Also, why isn't Redline in the table?
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