Rick Rogers, director of Alvarion, says true computing mobility is not the pipedream it used to be. It has, in fact, for various business and environment reasons, become more of a necessity than an option. "Industry leaders are aggressively launching technologies which will give consumers even more mobility and connectivity. Alvarion is at the forefront of mobile computing and Wimax, in particular, is one such technology that will be a catalyst in the global marketplace as far as mobility is concerned," Rogers says.
The Wimax Forum recently announced that it projects more than 133 million Wimax users globally by 2012. Of these, 70% will use mobile and portable devices to access broadband Internet services. "Wimax allows high-speed Internet access from laptops, phones or other mobile devices over greater distances than previous technologies," Rogers says.
With 80% of South Africans owning a mobile phone, consumers are in the ideal position to embrace Wimax as a technology which can stretch the way they live and work in any direction, effectively making mobility a must-have for even the most basic computer user. People no longer have to communicate from a fixed station and wireless, high-resolution access is not restricted to the four walls of one's home.
PCs are increasingly taking a back seat to a new breed of laptops, ultramobile PCs, mobile internet devices and cellphones, with notebooks and other handheld devices continuing to be the fastest growing computing segment.
"Nokia has recently launched a Wimax-enabled handset and Intel has made aggressive statements around new products which will integrate Wimax," Rogers says.
Intel plans to launch a product called Montevina in mid-2008, which will become the company's next-generation Centrino mobile platform. On the wireless front, Montevina notebooks will be ready to connect with the latest networks, out of the box.
Wireless technologies, Rogers says, will continue to compete for your wallet and air space as its competitive landscape pushes fringe mobile computing devices into the background - non-connected PDAs, phones that cannot access the Internet and act as a modem, and notebooks/tablets that have only limited versions of wireless access. "Mobility is no longer an expensive, top-level business tool, but something that is accessible to the man in the street. As long as consumers keep adopting mobile technology, they will expect it to evolve," says Rogers.
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