When BusinessWeek recently ranked the top 20 Chinese brands, ZTE was bound to have a place of honor. It has built up a terrific reputation for developing and delivering aggressively.

Started in 1985 in Shenzhen, China, its 31000-strong team shoots across the spectrum with its wide range of product lines. It competes with Tier 1 vendors as well as small ones for CPE devices. Claiming to spend 10% of its revenue (that’s $2.7 billion in 2005) on R&D, it has earned grudging respect from its competitors.

It has struck deals with most big players (Intel, Fujitsu, Ericsson, France Telecom, Hutchison Whampoa, to name a few). It has won plenty of deals (Serbia, parts of Europe, Angola, Morocco, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and of course China too). Its first wireless win in North America is a deal with Telus to supply EV-DO cards.

But then, why is it a dark dragon? Well, unlike most other vendors who shout hoarsely from rooftops about every teeny-weeny twiddle bit of progress, it keeps a relatively quieter profile. Although accused of unleashing a price war, its plus points are its massive investment in development and its ability to compete across the market segments. In WiMAX, it is one of the few players to have products in the fixed and mobile categories. It has not publicized its WiMAX strategy much and there has not been much of a buzz in China about WiMAX either. If China is planning to bolster the wireless offerings during the Olympics in 2008 with WiMAX, then ZTE stands a good chance of winning that deal too.

Further Reading:

The BusinessWeek article on China’s Top 20 Brands
ZTE to supply Sprint Nextel with WiMAX devices
ZTE’s win in India
Recent ZTE and Telus announcement.
Another example of ZTE expansion.

Here’s a recipe that will interest you. Take a celebrity and start a service company in broadband wireless. Toss in $900 million from Intel and Motorola. Stir up measly revenue of $33m in 2005. Serve barely 162,000 customers (as of Sep 2006). And there you have it: the recipe of Clearwire that always raises a lot of interest.

Headquartered in Kirkland, Washington, Clearwire is a wireless service provider, the latest baby of Craig McCaw (of McCaw Cellular which was sold to AT&T, XO and Teledesic fame). It offers “off-the-shelf” wireless broadband internet solutions in about 370 cities in US. Their offering is not that spectacular: 1.5Mbps-256kbps upload-download at the most.

Clearwire is still trial-testing mobile WiMAX jointly with Intel and Motorola. And, they own the spectrum! So, what could they do next? Expand rapidly as soon as they find the WiMAX trials successful? Team up with Sprint-Nextel to provide choices for customers? Will the cellular carriers like the competition to 3G/EVDO or like the choice-offerings better? Sure, there are lots of gripes about the company’s current plans and services on the web, but then who said that being a service company is easy.

Given the background, it is not surprising to find all focus on this company revolving around McCaw. He is big on autonomy, creating and giving value to customers. He believes in assembling a great team and giving them the autonomy to perform. So, will this recipe lead to a feast or a disappointment? Marinating in time and checking back seems to be the answer.

Further Reading:

A Business 2.0 article on Clearwire
A Forbes’ mention of Clearwire
On ZDNet
Om Malik’s take
On the Clearwire financials

Here’s a WiMAX quiz: Name the most successful company in worldwide deployment of wireless broadband solutions and now a leader in WiMAX?

It is Alvarion Networks. Based in Israel, founded in 1992, it is a publicly traded industry veteran with around a thousand people. It has deployed over 2 million units in 150 countries. It used to work on multiple areas, but after the recent sale of its Cellular Mobile Unit, the focus is exclusively on WiMAX. It used its first mover advantage to great strength. Alvarion teams up with Intel’s WiMAX chip to provide its solution. Alvarion’s products enable the delivery of business and residential broadband access, corporate VPNs, toll quality telephony, mobile base station feeding, hotspot coverage extension, community interconnection, public safety communications, and mobile voice and data. In short, across the whole spectrum.

With mobile versions just around the corner, Alvarion has a lot going for it. There is little doubt that its red-ink numbers is an investment into a profitable future. Of course, this could take time due to bottlenecks like regulations and slower adoption of WiMAX. Its lion’s share will definitely reduce as competition heats up and the circling giants close in. For example: Sprint’s big account here was won by Motorola and Samsung combo, without a chance for Alvarion. Kudos to a pioneer who has achieved so much, and promises a good future.

Further Reading:

Alvarion Financials
TelephonyOnline article on Alvarion
Another article that echoes the strengths of Alvarion
An analyst speaks about investing in Alvarion stock
An example of its deployment described here

When Peter Claydon and Doug Pulley founded picoChip, their grand aim was “to solve the tough problems of next generation wireless with a programmable platform.” Today, they are a force to reckon with in WiMAX.

picoChip is a fabless semiconductor company, focusing on the PHY (Physical Layer). They provide a programmable chip (sort of SSoC - a Software SoC) that can be used for WiMAX, WCDMA, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, 802.11, etc. This places them in a unique position of supplying to competing markets. They started in 2000, with designs on the 3G market, but today, their biggest slice is WiMAX. Considering that they are a ’sub-system design house’ they have teamed up with MAC and Radio providers to provide the complete solution. Their processor is a veritable power-house: for instance, the PC102 has 308 processors, each clocking 160MHz, communicating with an internal bandwidth of 3.3 terabits/s. Since all decisions on code/interconnects are made at compile time, it is a completely deterministic architecture. They provide the software (reference designs) and their toolchain hides the complexity of the underpinnings by providing a very simple interface. They even obviate the need to have an RTOS.

The remarkable flexibility of their processor-array is a high value-proposition (it is the only company that provides just a software upgrade from Fixed WiMAX SS/BS to Mobile WiMAX SS/BS running on the same hardware). Their innovative approach has earned them plenty of plaudits. They provide the shortest time-to-market path, lower BOM and prevent technological obsolesce. Success has been forthcoming: they have partnered with Korea Telecom to implement the WiBro service in Korea.

CETECOM, the WiMAX Certification Lab is using their design for certification testing of equipment from other vendors. For a VC funded company in such an area, revenues will take time to come in, although specific numbers are not available. Since non-technological factors could define the way this future will evolve, there could be pitfalls. Hopefully, with their approach and partnerships, picoChip’s future will be bright enough.

Further Reading:

www.picochip.com
picoChip discusses its role
WirelessDesignOnline article
The Femtocell option on CommsDesign
picoChip secures additional funding