David Morton (mortonmanor)
I have a few minutes of downtime here at the Gartner Wireless & Mobile Summit and thought I’d quickly pass on a few tidbits from the first day.
Nick Jones (Distinguished Gartner Analyst) helped set the stage in his keynote by stating that the next 3-5 years are the “most interesting since the mobile started”. If you’ve read my first post to this site, you know that I’ve feel this way too.
There is little doubt that content, uses (applications) and consumer technology are king. Every presentation to date has at least touched on or more of these themes. Look to more indepth thoughts about some of these issues in articles to come.
LTE vs WiMax
Nick predicts that LTE will begin to dominate the 4G landscape in the near term and that WiMax numbers and usage (in the enterprise) will remain relatively flat for the next few years. He cites lack of ubiquity in terms of networks, devices and mobility as factors that will limit WiMax in the near term. While Intel and some of my friends at ClearWire and in Africa might disagree, I too think that LTE will gain a lot of grown before WiMax will take root in a big way. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, but that is the way things look today.
A couple of other interesting predictions from Nick:
- 802.11n shipments won’t overtake 802.11 a/g in the enterprise until 2010
- Limits in back haul represent a challenge to ubiquitous, high-speed mobile networks.
- Bluetooth still has legs with Ultra Low Power (ULP) and BT with wifi making major inroads.
- 75% of handsets in Western Europe will be smartphones by 2011
- HD video will appear in handsets by later this year or early next.
What do you think about Nick’s predictions?
Granted this post was before this announcement but I’d say the new Sprint-Clearwire company in partnership with Intel, Google, Time Warner and Comcast contradicts Nick’s prediction. He cites lack of ubiquity? Involvement from those names almost certainly spells ubiquity. WiMAX is real with Sprint rollout underway now and the new Clearwire in 2009, while LTE is in infancy. Maybe we differ on the definition of ‘near term’, but often is the case that the early bird gets the worm.
Nice site by the way.