Sidecut Reports

Nothing like a fun rumor to keep things cooking during the normally dormant holiday season: Hearing more about the rumored “Google Phone,” which TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington now says might be a “data only, VoIP driven device,” and thinking that it sounds like something built for WiMAX, especially so since Google is after all still a major investor in WiMAX provider Clearwire.

Though Google did not participate in the latest funding round for Clearwire, we’ve been waiting for the Android shoe to drop into the WiMAX market — and it would seem to make sense that a Google-produced device with WiMAX support might be the way the search giant helps “fund” the Clearwire buildout, by paying itself to put WiMAX connectivity into the device.

Increased data consumption, over-the-top VoIP, and lotsa video — sounds like a prescription that calls for a beefy connection like WiMAX on the back end. For the slow-to-grow Clearwire network, a new cool device like a GooglePhone would be just what the doctor ordered.

UPDATE: Tricia Duryee at mocoNews thinks the way we do. And we agree: Things could get a lot more interesting!

If you were hoping to hear more news about exciting new devices for WiMAX networks in the U.S., the Sprint Open Developers Conference was a bit of a letdown Tuesday. While hints of future devices were dropped again — there will be a WiMAX phone in 2010, maybe — firm details, the kind you can plan purchases around, were nowhere in sight. And judging from the comments from one Sprint exec, you can stick a fork in the Mobile Internet Device idea, at least until device manufacturers decide to start charging a lot less for MIDs like the Samsung Mondi.

Sorry I don’t have the exec’s name — I came in late to the keynote panel — but someone clearly from Sprint was asked about MIDs, and the reply wasn’t encouraging. Though the Mondi is available from Clearwire in its current markets, its high price — $449.99, not including any rate plan — was noted by the Sprint exec as something that keeps wallets in pockets.

“With MIDs, when you take the price and then add rate plans, customers start to get a little uncomfortable,” said the Sprint exec on stage. “It’s just not a scalable model to get a lot of traction.” A few remarks later, the same exec basically said that if device manufacturers want to get MIDs on WiMAX networks, they may have to eat part of the costs to seed interest. “We [service providers] aren’t going to accept all the risk,” the Sprint exec said.

Zang! Tough words, but we pretty much agree with Sprint on the whole MID thing — in our most recent CLEARWIRE NTK report for October 2009, we called the Mondi “an overly expensive, somewhat confusing form-factor machine that wasn’t big enough to do ‘real’ laptop work, and didn’t contain a cellular link to make voice calls an easy proposition.” We also said the $450 list price was way too high for such an esoteric device, especially compared to the $199 list price for the Apple iPhone 3GS. But that also means that Sprint isn’t going to stick its neck out on unproven devices; remember, CEO Dan Hesse dissed Android just one short year ago. Unfortunately for WiMAX users, that means more dongles and laptops.

There was more disappointment for developers hoping to hear more about the cool things WiMAX might enable them to do — network APIs for attributes like location-based services and QoS hooks are apparently still on the drawing board, answers that prompted one twitterer in the audience to note that “Top Q&A response at dev conference is “its on the roadmap.” While we are bullish on things like the mobile broadband routers (which we call Pocketspots) that Sprint has already launched, cool toys that exploit WiMAX’s attributes are things we apparently won’t see until much later in 2010.

Or, as we said in our CLEARWIRE NTK report for October 2009: “Without a doubt, the coolest thing about WiMAX is its ability to provide a true broadband connection with cellular mobility. One of Clearwire’s biggest problems, however, is a lack of a compelling reason to take advantage of that mobile connection — and the dearth of devices that would allow you to even try.”

Unfortunately, nothing we heard Tuesday changed our mind. The wait continues.

Just reading the Bizweek story about Motorola’s plans to build a smartphone running Google’s Android mobile OS, and the first (unanswered) question that comes to my mind is… doesn’t it make sense to put a WiMax chip in this thing?

I mean, Google is a half-billion dollar investor in the nation’s soon-to-be biggest WiMax network… Motorola is the infrastructure supplier for the biggest soon-to-be-launched mobile WiMax deployment in the U.S. … just makes sense to think there will be a WiMax chip in there, no? Not that it would surprise us if we heard more about all this at CES.

No idea if it is true, maybe the Android guys know more?