A market research firm predicts that WiMax won't pull in more than $1 billion before 2007: The market is likely to reach $2.5 billion by 2009, according to iSuppli, a research firm. While it's likely that WiMax won't reach the heights that some supporters envision, iSuppli may be missing a couple of key points. Researchers there say that landline players won't see any reason to use WiMax because it doesn't offer a quantum leap in capabilities over their existing technologies. That may be true, but a technology that offers a similar result but may cost quite a bit less, like WiMax, would certainly be of interest to operators.
To the contrary of many other analysts, iSuppli suspects that the best potential for WiMax will be as a next generation mobile network. This article, in fact, notes that the concept of using WiMax as a next generation mobile network is the concept least promoted by Intel. However, Intel is often cited discussing exactly that vision and its plans to build WiMax onto chips that will be used in laptops is based on that vision. Many analysts see the most significant potential for WiMax as a backhaul technology, for Wi-Fi hotspots or cellular or other networks.