December 11, 2007
Note to Wall Street: Wimax to have 80 million users very soon
World adoption of Wimax is really on a roll, yet Wall Street keeps talking it down, and running down the technology’s top US based deployer. For an example:
Things rapidly came unglued during the fall. Shareholders became increasingly aggravated about Sprint’s disappointing financial performace and the cost of deploying the WiMax infrastructure. This first led to the ouster of CEO Gary Forsee in October and the dissolution of the Clearwire-Sprint accord earlier this month. (from Unstrung)
Top infrastructure maker Motorola has also been taking a beating. With it’s CEO and CTO being pushed out because their market share in the locked handset market (a dying business) is taking a hit. In the case of Moto, their CTO landed on her feet immediately as CTO at company that would surely take a hit in market value if they had made a bad hire: Cisco. Cisco is not known for investing in new technology until it is actually market ready.
Are the spreadsheet wiz kids from the ivy league MBA schools totally clueless? Consider this analysis form Juniper Research:
Global adoption of mobile WiMax broadband services are tipped to reach five million subscribers in the next five years, with 2010 suggested as the year the technology will really begin to take off. According to Juniper Research, the value of mobile WiMax service revenues globally will grow to over US$23bn a year by 2013.
The largest markets for the technology will be the US, Japan and South Korea. Some 10 countries will have mobile WiMax device markets worth in excess of US$100m a year. (from Silicon Republic)
Your humble admin does not believe that a bunch of profoundly well educated 20 somethings working overtime in the financial bowels of a tech based industry can be so very tech ignorant. I think it has more to do with another trait of being young and brilliant on the path to burnout: lack of patience. These folks are talking up companies that are sticking with old tech that has peaked and talking down companies that are investing in the future. Companies at the top of the game produce the best short term returns. If you are a non-dominant company, you must deploy the next generation technology first. The second tier has no other path to take if they expect to survive, which is something most of the young analysts will not do in their chosen profession.
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