ARCchart: Cellular Centrino Style

ARCchart analyzes the impact of recent announcements by Verizon Wireless in the US and Vodafone in Europe "to have their respective cellular-based broadband technologies integrated into laptops, allowing connectivity to their networks out of the box." The throrough analysis looks at the various announcements and the implications for Wi-Fi and WiMax. ARCchart opines that:

Wi-Fi is here to stay, and it is conceivable that, very soon, all laptops and non-cellular handheld devices will have the wireless technology embedded. Things are less secure for WiMAX. Increasingly, cellular operators are accelerating their evolutionary journey towards next generation 3G and many will have these networks deployed by the time mobile WiMAX networks emerge. With 3G integration into laptops, the strength of Intel’s ‘Centrino WiMAX’ trump card is considerably diluted.

As ARCchart notes, pricing will be critical, but "if the cellular operators are prepared to respond to the pricing challenge (as fixed-line operators are increasingly doing in response to VoIP), then WiMAX will have a battle on its hands."