According to Airgo chief executive Greg Raleigh, it is.
...............................................
Is Wi-Fi Headed toward an Early Grave?
12.08.06 Total posts: 6
By Mark Hachman
Is Wi-Fi dead as a standalone technology? According to Airgo chief executive Greg Raleigh, it is.
Airgo, which agreed to be acquired Monday by Qualcomm, helped pioneer the latest generation of Wi-Fi technology, called 802.11n. Although the technology is currently mired in a series of draft standards, analysts expect 802.11n to be completed next year.
For years, however, Wi-Fi has been what some call a "heart" technology, serving as the fundamental technology around which a product, such as a router or PC Card, has been designed. Market research firm In-Stat said Monday that sales of Wi-Fi chipsets are on track to exceed 200 million units in 2006, according to statistics compiled by the Wi-Fi Alliance and In-Stat. That's a 25-percent boost since last year.
With the approval of 802.11n, however, Raleigh sees Wi-Fi losing its significance, and co-existing with WWAN technologies like the 3G EDGE telecom/data standard in routers and cards.
"The reason we're so excited at Airgo is that it's the next big step from Airgo," Raleigh said in an interview this week. "A year from now, forward from there, we expect the dominant technology to be WWAN plus WLAN. WLAN by itself is not going to be interesting."
Raleigh said that cellular companies require a much larger initial investment, leading to stability in the market. He said that customers have been telling them that they want WAN and LAN technologies on the same card. |
