Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow promises WiMAX smartphones by Christmas of 2010.
Perhaps it will resemble the one announced this week by a trio of companies to build a WiMAX smartphone based on Android. That smartphone will support VoIP over WiMAX as well as other IP communication technologies and involves Beceem Communications, D2 Technologies and ECS.
The smartphone will make use of D2’s mCUE converged communications client powering the ECS T371 mobile device, based on the OMAP-3430 processor (the ARM Cortex-A8) from Texas Instruments, paired with Beceem’s BCSM250 WiMAX modem.
“Together with Beceem and ECS, we’ve shown how a complete ecosystem dedicated to mobile VoIP over WiMAX can help device manufacturers and unified communications/VoIP providers get new products to market more quickly, efficiently and effectively,” said Doug Makishima, chief operating officer at D2 Technologies.
D2’s mCUE VoIP software provides voice, IM chat, presence and video calls over WiMAX, as well as multi-radio, multi-network seamless voice call handover.
An Android WiMAX phone has the air of inevitably about it. The interesting bit is how Comcast might use it. Get your Hulu here — for $12.95/month.
Yankee Group expects global WiMAX subscriptions to grow from 3.9 million today to 92.3 million in 2015.
