Sidecut Reports

Well the Motorola Xoom is officially out in the wild at Verizon Wireless, and while it may very well be the first “real 4G” tablet to hit the market you will still have to wait to find out if there are any additional charges waiting for anyone who wants to use the Xoom on Verizon’s faster LTE network.


The Xoom in back row, part of the 10 consumer LTE devices Verizon announced at CES. Credit: Sidecut Reports.

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On a year-end financial conference call that left most of the big questions surrounding its business unanswered, nascent national WiMAX provider Clearwire Thursday nevertheless retained a bullish outlook on its ongoing operations, even predicting the possibility of becoming profitable as early as 2012.

While denying rumors that it would close down or cease its retail business, the leading provider of 4G wireless broadband services in the U.S. did say it would emphasize the wholesale side of its business in 2011, while it also slows down network buildouts and scales back retail operations to conserve cash. But even as Clearwire expects to only add a few new rural markets in 2011 the company also predicts it will double its subscriber base from the current 4.4 million to 8.8 million by the end of the year, with most of those additions coming via wholesale deals such as via sales of Sprint’s 4G smartphones, which run on the Clearwire network for their high-speed connection.

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With no inside knowledge, we are still expecting that Thursday’s scheduled Q4/2010 yearly earnings call from nascent national WiMAX provider Clearwire will yield some solid news about the company’s path forward, including a full explanation of the rumors that say Clearwire will ditch retail operations and focus on being a wholesale provider to partners like Sprint, Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

While we have some guesses as to which way things may go — and who may or may not be leaving the company sometime soon — we’ll wait for the official word and report immediately after. (You can also follow us on Twitter, @paulkaps, for off the cuff reactions to the news on the call which starts at 1:30 Pacific Time.) As a public service we present the following timeline with Clearwire historical highlights — please feel free to add your own in the comments.

CLEARWIRE HISTORICAL TIMELINE

(An unofficial review of the top events in the history of Clearwire, the provider of a WiMAX 4G network in 71+ markets in the U.S.)

August, 2004 — Clearwire debuts in Jacksonville, Fla. (Though Clearwire’s technology is a proprietary WiMax-like flavor, it is close enough to real WiMax that Clearwire’s planned switch to standards-based gear should not cause undue hardships to the company and its customers.)

October, 2004 — Intel Capital signs on as a Clearwire investor, the first of many WiMax investments from Intel.

May 2005 — Intel and Sprint announced a “joint effort” to advance mobile WiMax, with no mention of funding or investment.

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