http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061011-7963.html

Interesting article suggesting that Nokia plans to have WiMAX in phones by 2008. I think it’s interesting for two reasons

a) Any hardware technology is first integrated in the PC market first and the phone/mobile market adopts it after the chip cost comes down, the technology has proven itself in the market place and IP-licensing agreements are sorted out.
BTW, this was also true for Bluetooth

It doesn’t look like PC/Laptops will adopt WiMAX in next 1-2 years atleast. Perhaps this is an indication of things to come - with Cell phones moving towards being the center of the computing ecosystem.. .

b) Battery life: With Wi Fi on all the time, the battery life of the phone is reduced in half. Early incarnations of WiMAX will consume even more power, so you can expect even worse battery life. The only application i can think of initially is short-burst data transfers. I don’t think this is intended to compete with Cell phone networks atleast in the short term which i feel is more ‘disruptive’.