Laptop vendors to offer Centrino with WiMax next year
San Francisco (IDGNS) - Several laptop vendors plan to announce support for an upcoming version of Intel's Centrino platform that uses WiMax wide-area networking technology — but Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Apple are not expected to be among them.
Context & Ripple Effects
Intel has spent two years assembling the pieces for putting WiMax inside laptops: a $900 million funding round at a WiMax operator in 2006 signaled the network buildout was real, and in May 2007 the first WiMax laptop card cleared the FCC. What was missing was volume — Wi-Fi went mainstream only once it shipped standard inside Centrino rather than as an add-on card.
This announcement is that play repeating for wide-area wireless: several vendors committing to a Centrino variant with WiMax built in next year. The reported absences are as telling as the commitments — Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Apple are said to be sitting out the first wave, though that remains unconfirmed.
First-order effects
- The announcing vendors get a year-long window as the only notebooks shipping with built-in wide-area broadband, while Intel turns Centrino from a Wi-Fi bundle into a Wi-Fi-plus-WiMax platform differentiator.
- HP, Dell, and Apple — if the report holds — cede the early WiMax laptop market to smaller rivals and keep flexibility to wait until carrier coverage justifies the added radio cost.
Second-order effects
- WiMax network operators gain their first meaningful device pipeline: without native laptop support, subscriber growth depended on external cards like the one the FCC approved in May 2007.
- The big three's absence pressures Intel to sweeten the platform economics — bundling, pricing, or co-marketing — before the next refresh cycle, much as its early 802.11n push forced the industry to adopt pre-standard silicon.
Third-order effects
- If built-in WiMax follows the Wi-Fi playbook, laptop connectivity shifts from hotspot-bound to always-on wide-area access, making the PC maker's radio choices — not just the carrier's towers — a determinant of which networks win.
- Platform vendors like Intel gain further leverage over which wireless standards reach mass-market hardware, entrenching the pattern of de facto standard-setting through chipset roadmaps rather than standards bodies alone.
The trend: Laptop wireless is moving from local Wi-Fi hotspots toward built-in wide-area broadband, with Intel's Centrino roadmap acting as the gatekeeper for which radios reach the mainstream.