Clearwire Adds Salt Lake City, St. Louis and Richmond, Va. to WiMAX Market List
Three more sorta-big cities will join the WiMAX market Monday, when Clearwire officially announces services in Salt Lake City, St. Louis and Richmond, Va. By our late-night count that brings the total of live markets to 36 37 for Clearwire in the U.S., though we think some of those (like Dallas-Fort Worth) should count as more than one city. They certainly count ‘em that way in the Metroplex.
From a quick read of the press releases we see that there may be some new discounting incentives to get folks to try WiMAX out — the Richmond release and the St. Louis announcement both talk about a $15-per-month trial promotion for a couple months, while the Salt Lake promotions speak of $20 per month trials. Sounds like it’s “dealin’ days” for WiMAX service plans — we are wondering how low you can go and if you can combine the new service-plan deals with some of the new hardware promotions available from Best Buy.
While the advent of WiMAX services and pricing competition will no doubt be welcome by at least some of the fine residents of the greater Salt Lake City corridor, the wonderful folks of Richmond and the Cardinal fans of St. Louis, the greater question for Clearwire remains the “when” for its blockbuster markets on tap for 2010, namely New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
With the Samsung Epic 4G WiMAX phone being announced Monday by Clearwire partner Sprint, it’s a good guess that device makers are ramping up to meet expected market expansions; but until the mega-markets go live, Clearwire is still playing on a much smaller field than the one where Apple and AT&T can rack up millons-per-weekend sales for iPhones, working antennas or not. With the second fiscal quarter — so far historically the slowest for Clearwire — ending this week, it will be interesting to see if Clearwire’s sales have kept accelerating when we hear numbers next (probably not until early August). Remember, Q2 numbers should also include whatever total Sprint finally figures out for HTC EVO 4G sales — so maybe no dropoff for Clearwire this year after all.
