Intel's WiMax venture may benefit all chip makers

BEIJING, May 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Plans for high-speed wireless Internet will benefit Intel Corp. - an investor in the Sprint Nextel-Clearwire WiMax venture - and analysts expect other chip makers to gain from Intel's position and increased spending on similar networks.

Sprint Nextel Corp. and Clearwire Corp. announced earlier this month they would combine their wireless broadband units to form a 14.6 billion U.S. dollar communications company that would develop and market high-speed mobile Internet service based on WiMax technology.

Intel - which invested in the project along with several others - is slated to work with manufacturers to put WiMax chips in laptops containing its Centrino 2 processors and other Intel-based mobile Internet products. Intel and fellow investor Google Inc. also have options to enter third-generation and fourth-generation wholesale agreements with Clearwire and Sprint.

Jefferies & Co. analyst John Lau said Intel's move to put WiMax chips into laptops is similar to what the company did in the past to promote the spread of Wi-Fi technology.

"We believe that Intel will include WiMax capabilities into their notebooks by the end of this year; this will spur demand for WiMax," Lau said.

Lau thinks the company's efforts to promote technologies like WiMax and Wi-Fi are intended to promote overall computing. These efforts "are not material to their revenue or their earnings, but as a technology enabler this will definitely impact their microprocessor sales," he said.

American Technology Research analyst Doug Freedman noted that wireless infrastructure installation requires a fair amount of analog content in base station boxes, so growth of high-speed networks could increase demand for chips from companies like Linear Technology Corp. and Texas Instruments.

He also pointed to radio frequency chip makers like Anadigics Inc., TriQuint Semiconductor Inc. and RF Micro Devices Inc. as companies that would see rising demand for their products from such infrastructure buildouts.

(Agencies)