Is WiMAX Dead?

International telecom advisors Analysys Mason, headquartered in London with offices in over 80 countries, released an interesting report last week on worldwide wireless opportunities for revenue growth. The report predicts cellular technologies will take the largest revenue share between now and 2015. Globally, the study predicts 2.1 billion wireless broadband customers will generate USD784 billion in service revenue by 2015.

Here's some detail from the report:

The revenue increase of about 2400% will be underpinned by continued developments in wireless technologies, improvements in devices and more flexible pricing options.

Because W-CDMA to HSPA to HSPA+ is the natural evolution path for GSM operators, the number of HSPA and HSPA+ customers worldwide will increase from 61 million at the end of 2008 to 1.1 billion at the end of 2015.

Cellular technologies will dominate wireless broadband services, with twenty times as many users as WiMAX by the end of 2015.

LTE will take off relatively slowly, but its customer base will reach 440 million by 2015, with associated revenue of USD194 billion.

WiMAX will be squeezed from developed markets by fixed and cellular broadband services and by 2015 will serve just 98 million customers worldwide, of which 92% will be in developing regions.

The report continues:

WiMAX will fail to achieve a significant share of the rapidly developing wireless broadband market, contributing only 2% of global revenue. “By 2015, there will be twenty times as many customers for cellular broadband services as for WiMAX,” according to Dr Alastair Brydon, co-author of the report, “The vast majority of MNOs will not break ranks to WiMAX, but will upgrade to LTE, resulting in over four times more LTE users by the end of 2015.”

It looks like WiMAX may not fit predicted migration paths according to Analysys Mason. You can get details from the report here.