As I have previously speculated here and only two hours ago, Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) will cut WiMAX investment.
As I could easily guess, the WiMAX market has shrunk enough for ALU to get out of the business, thus focusing in their core business and future LTE.
Alcatel-Lucent will reduce spending on WiMAX by “partnering, co-sourcing and participating in the consolidation of the industry,” it said. Other areas that will meet the same fate include customer premise equipment, some legacy applications, and the company’s portfolio of fixed-line telecommunications products not based on the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) core.
To me it is clear that ALU will partnet with Alvarion for Mobile WiMAX, as they have done in the past with the “Fixed” WiMAX. These are great news for Alvarion as another big player is getting out of the Market; Nortel has announced the same a few months ago and partnered with Alvarion, though I don’t think we have seen the result in Alvarion’s balance sheet.
What Next?
Other two big players are Motorola and Samsung:
- Samsung – I don’t expect Samsung giving up on WiMAX, as it is their beachhead into the Mobile World outside Korea
- Motorola – More difficult to predict, but if I have to, my guess is MOTO will also get out of the WiMAX business.