ABI Research ranked Samsung as the top WiMAX base station vendor in its Vendor Matrix. The Vendor Matrix provides analysis developed by ABI Research to provide an understanding of vendors’ positions in specific markets. Vendors are graded on parameters of “innovation” and “implementation’ across several criteria unique to each vendor matrix.
ABI Research researched vendors’ early product development for mobile WiMAX, end-to-end solution solution and intellectual property holdings for OFDMA, MIMO and beamforming. Vendors’ market share and major customer wins, number of trials acquired and the degree of vendors’ focus on high-growth developing countries and their partnerships with other companies in the mobile WiMAX ecosystem were evaluated too.
Motorola and Alvarion were named second and third in the rankings. It helps that Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Nortel and Nokia Siemens Networks exited the WiMAX base station market since 2008. It helped Alvarion rise to the third position and Huawei grew because of its contracts with Clearwire.
“Samsung and Motorola have maintained the respective market leadership positions they established in our 2008 Matrix,” research analyst Xavier Ortiz, said, “This year, they ranked very close to one another. Each has a decent amount of R&D invested in this area, as well as comprehensive 802.16 patent portfolios.
The rankings show how Samsung continues to evolve and develop mobile WiMAX base station technology. Companies that construct base stations must make them durable. Operators must be able to swap out the radios inside the base stations to switch from WiMAX to LTE in the future.
