Top vendors producing WiMAX handsets : Can unsubsidized handsets compete with 3G?

The grandiose vision of ubiquitous WiMAX connectivity for everything under the sun is intoxicating, at least to Sprint Nextel Corp. and its partners.
And credibility rises when the world’s top three mobile handset vendors, which also produce WiMAX infrastructure, pledge to support Sprint Nextel’s plans.
Sprint Nextel’s business plan for allowing other parties to sell those handsets unsubsidized, however, raises questions about how WiMAX handsets with relatively expensive chipsets will compete with the carrier’s plans for its constantly evolving CDMA2000 1x EV-DO network with subsidized handsets-or, for that matter, how unsubsidized WiMAX handsets will compete with other carriers’ subsidized, 3G-based handset offerings.
Will traditional-style handsets running on a WiMAX network offer enough broadband-based features and services to compete effectively with less-expensive devices that take advantage of the industry’s 3G ramp? Given the range of consumer electronics devices forecast to contain WiMAX connectivity, will handsets get lost in the shuffle?
Some WiMAX chipset vendors discuss only the notion of “terminals,” precisely because it remains somewhat unclear how devices such as traditional handsets will fare in a world that will launch with laptops using PC cards and embedded WiMAX modules and move on to a wide swath of consumer electronics devices.
Analyst Tero Kuittinen at Avian Securities L.L.C. was skeptical that more wasn’t said about traditional handsets-with-WiMAX at Sprint Nextel’s recent Technology Summit in Vienna, Va.
“Partners have committed to 50 million devices embedding mobile WiMAX support,” Kuittinen wrote in a column for RealMoney.com last month. “This does sound impressive. We don’t know which partners and the nature of the commitment, though.”
WiMAX World may offer an opportunity for Sprint Nextel and the world’s top handset makers to provide further glimpses of their plans.