SAN FRANCISCO—Intel Corp. says its WiMAX cards for laptops will be available sometime in the second half of this year, not in 2007 as was previously announced.
The announcement was made by Sean Maloney, vice president of Intel’s mobility group during the company’s Development Forum in San Francisco.
Intel spokesperson Amy Martin confirmed that the announcement did not extend to embedded WiMAX technology in laptops, which she said Intel expects to offer in the 2007 or 2008 time frame.
The company also introduced its first multi-band, single-chip Wi-Fi and WiMAX radio for laptops, called OFER.
Intel was an early proponent of WiMAX technology, which is often referred to as Wi-Fi on steroids. WiMAX is broadband wireless technology based on the 802.16 standard, with the mobile “e” standard finally reaching approval by the IEEE in December 2005. A number of heavy-hitting vendors like Nortel Networks Ltd., Motorola Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., as well as Intel, are investing heavily in WiMAX development.
