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By Marguerite Reardon, 2 June 2009 17:05

NEWS

...investment in the things we have already been doing in wireless along with a need in the consumer electronics and machine-to-machine markets for wireless broadband access coming together to create this big opportunity for us," he said.

Big opportunity
Indeed, this could be a big opportunity for Motorola and any company looking to embed wireless broadband technology into consumer electronics devices, such a laptops, netbooks, digital cameras gaming devices, and other devices.

By 2014, market research firm Strategy Analytics predicts, there will be 100 million devices with 3G and 4G technology embedded in them. Initially, this market will be dominated by laptops and netbook computers. By the end of 2009, more than half of the 8.4 million consumer electronics devices installed and enabled for 3G and 4G will be notebook computers, Strategy Analytics predicts. And the firm believes that the entire market of 3G and 4G enabled products will nearly double to 16.6 million in 2014.

Some wireless operators, such as US carriers AT&T and Verizon Wireless, are already moving toward 4G networks. Verizon Wireless said it plans to test its 4G LTE network this year and will offer its service commercially in 2010. AT&T is also upgrading its 3G network with a faster generation of HSPA technology. And fellow US mobile operator Clearwire, which is backed by Sprint, Google, Intel, and cable operators Comcast and Time Warner, is also adding more cities to its 4G WiMax network this year and it plans to continue to expand that network in the next few years.

Motorola plans to offer solutions for all three network technologies. Specifically, the company is announcing the Motorola WTM1100, a WiMax network adapter that operates in the 2.5GHz or 3.5GHz spectrum to provide WiMax connectivity. The Motorola HTM1000 is a 3G/2G HSPA, EDGE and GPRS adapter that supports downlink speeds of up to 10.1Mbps and uplinks of 5.76Mbps uplink, the company claims. These products will be available in the third quarter of this year for testing. Koerper said they will also likely be offered in laptops and netbooks by the end of the year.

The Motorola LTM1000, a module developed for LTE networks, will offer download speeds up to 100Mbps and upload speeds up to 50Mbps the company said. This product will be available for device and network sampling by the end of the year and products will likely hit the market starting in the middle of 2010.

Motorola hasn't announced any consumer electronics or machine-to-machine manufacturers that it is working with yet, but the Koerper said the company is already in discussions with companies.

Of course, Motorola isn't the only company going after this market. There are already several companies developing wireless modules for embedded devices, including Novatel and Sierra Wireless but Koerper said these companies typically use components and technology from other companies, such as Qualcomm. By contrast, Motorola is using all its own technology, which he claims is an added benefit to the company's products.

Koerper said that fitting the technologies together so that they work well together is not trivial, and added that Motorola has already developed technology to help manage power consumption and to seamlessly switch between wireless network technologies. As a result, he believes that Motorola has the expertise and experience to export its wireless technology to other device manufacturers and be successful in this market.

"There are only a few companies on planet that have shipped their wireless technology," Koerper said. "And there have been a lot of companies that have wanted to. Only a few have been able to do it successfully."