Samsung leaps ahead with new WiMAX mobile gear.

- Ultra Mobile PC Running Windows XP

- Touch Screen Smartphone/PDA

- WiMAX Dongles and PCMCIA Card for PCS

Portable WiMAX devices are coming to market now as Samsung showed last week with two new products--a smartphone/PDA and an Ultra Mobile Windows PC -plus two accessories that will turn any laptop or desktop into a WiMAX-compatible computer.

The product launches illustrate that the rest of the WiMAX world is not going to wait while Sprint and Clearwire play marbles, that the US and Europe could rapidly fall behind in mobile broadband as badly as they have in wireline broadband, that Google better be working to make some of those Android-based phones WiMAX-compatible if it wants to reach a global market and that the ultimate network for iPhones, iPod touches and other such devices has to be WiMAX, not just Wi-Fi.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Wireless broadband that offers speeds up to 13 Mbps and devices such as the ones that Samsung unveiled would have instant and wide appeal in the US and Europe.

WiBro is what Samsung calls the mobile version of WiMAX it's been developing for several years. It has promised that WiBro will be fully compatible with the final version of the WiMAX mobile standard, which is designed to work well even when users are moving at high speeds.

Samsung showed a WiBro smartphone (SPH-M8100), an Ultra Mobile PC running Windows XP with a full keyboard (SPH-P9000), a USB dongle (SPH-H1200) for laptops and desktops and a PCMCIA card for laptops.

The P9000 provides voice and multimedia data communications via WiBro. There's a full keyboard, an MP3 player, VoD and a camera. Running Windows XP, it can be used as a PC.

The SPH-M8100 is a PDA smartphone that has wireless Internet, voice telephony and video telephony services through WiBro and CDMA1x EV-DO. The slider phone has a 2.8-inch color touch-screen display, a TV-out connection, an MMC card slot and two cameras -a two-megapixel camera and a VGA camera for video phone calls. It also has Bluetooth with A2DP, 128MB ROM, 64MB RAM memory and Microsoft's view-and-edit function.

The USB Dongle allows PCs to access either a WiBro or an HSDPA cellular network. Where WiBro/WiMAX is available, Samsung promises mobile access speeds up to 13 Mbps in the Seoul deployment. Theoretically, WiBro/WiMAX allows for maximum data throughput of 30 Mbps to 50 Mbps. HSDPA is a standard used by many GSM networks around the world. Its speed is significantly slower than WiBro, but it's much more widely available on a global basis.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Samsung says the WiBro network is available in all parts of Seoul, including at 17 universities and on four subway lines.

With the new devices and the increased reach of WiBro in South Korea, Samsung expects WiBro to gain momentum and expand the market. There are currently about 70,000 WiBro subscribers in and around Seoul.

Last month, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) approved mobile WiMAX as a global standard for 3G networks.

The Korea Times reported that WiBro is expected to become a $41.4 billion business by 2010, according to a forecast from the Korean government- funded Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).