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Engadget: What the world needs now is another distraction to keep a driver’s eyes off the road, and Pioneer is ensuring wheelmen of the future will have something other than the asphalt to focus on with what it’s calling the Network AV playback system.

It relies on WiMAX to send your entire backlog of Knight Rider episodes straight to your Trans Am, and could stream every track from the Ronin Original Motion Picture Soundtrack too.

Pioneer also envisions its technology beaming data to your backyard and anywhere else you can get a WiMAX connection — which, right now, isn’t too many places. But, hey, at least with this tech you can drive somewhere that does.

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Electricpig: HTC has unveiled its much-rumoured “4G” phone in Russia – the world’s first handset to integrate WiMax and Wi-Fi cellular connectivity.

The manufacturer’s handset, the Max 4G, sports 8021.11b/g Wi Fi, tri-band GSM/GPRS/Edge and mobile WiMax. It also supports Bluetooth 2.0 plus it has built-in GPS and it supports VoIP calls.

It was developed for Russia’s Yota WiMax network that operates in Moscow and St Petersburg by local telecommunications company, Scartel.

The monster list of features continues with a 3.8inch, 480 x 800 touchscreen display, Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro, an accelerometer that auto-rotates the display when the phone’s turned through 90° plus a proximity sensor that turns off the display when you hold the phone up to your ear.

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Just Another Mobile Phone Blog: High Tech Computer (HTC) expects its revenues to grow more than 20% on year in 2008, and the company also plans to launch 2-3 Android-based mobile phones in the coming year, according to the Chinese-language Commercial Times which quoted remarks made by HTC CEO Peter Chou last week at a meeting with analysts from foreign investment firms in Taiwan.

During the meeting, Chou also said that HTC plans to launch a non-Qualcomm 3G solution in the near future, introduce a new user interface which will be better than its current TouchFlo technology in 2008, and launch WiMAX/TD-WCDMA mobile devices by the end of 2008 or in early 2009, the paper reported.

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Pocket Gamer: It’s one of those technologies we’re prone to make fun of, if only because we’re not entirely sure what it’s all about, but the news that the world’s first mobile WiMAX gaming device had been announced certainly got our attention.

Called the G100 and developed by Posbro, a subsidiary of Posdata (itself a subsidary of huge Korea steel maker Posco), it’s just been revealed at the WiMAX World USA 2007 exhibition in Chicago.

In terms of hardware specs, the G100 features a widescreen four-inch touchscreen that slides up to reveal four buttons which act as a D-pad, four face buttons and a mobile-style nub. There are also two shoulder buttons.

As for network technology, the G100 supports mobile WiMAX – itself a cell phone-style high-speed technology equivalent to 3G and 4G mobile networks – as well as old fashioned Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This, Posbro says, will enable users to select the most appropriate network to make an internet connection.

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Slashgear: Nokia announces its plan to introduce a WiMAX capable N800 Internet tablet by early next year. Intel has a hand in this plan by contributing its “Baxter Peak” WiMAX chip that will be implemented into the device.

Nokia will also add an integrated GPS chip to its next generation N series. There is small possibility for a non-WiMAX version of the N800 that is equipped with only GPS chip.

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InformationWeek: Motorola on Tuesday showed off its WiMax chipset, which the handset maker plans to include in mobile phones next year.The chipset, shown at WiMax World in Chicago, is designed to support WiMax wireless wide-area networks, which are under construction in dozens of metropolitan areas across the nation. WiMax is seen as an alternative to Wi-Fi in delivering data and voice services to mobile devices, such as smart phones and handheld computers. WiMax’s biggest advantage is a bigger, faster pipe for moving data, and its ability to carry over far greater distances.

Motorola said it plans to start delivering WiMax-enabled handsets to carriers around the world in 2008. Motorola says its chipset modem is designed for WiMax 802.16e compliance. The hardware has been tested in Motorola’s own infrastructure products, as well as equipment from other mobile manufacturers, according to Motorola.

“With this chipset, Motorola has been able to redefine what is possible for WiMax mobile devices, enabling a wider portfolio of devices, from voice-centric handsets to multimedia terminals,” Gary Koerper, VP of platform planning and systems architecture at Motorola, said in a statement.

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Electronista: The next level of mobile broadband could be a tremendous help to both music labels and video operators, companies from both fields have said. Fourth-generation wireless, which should appear in the US primarily through Intel’s WiMAX standard, should drastically lower the costs of downloading media by not only speeding access but taking the burden off of typically cramped cellular networks, which even with third-generation EVDO (…) or HSDPA (…) struggle to handle heavy downloading.

WiMAX is closer to Wi-Fi and pleases labels who could expect to see more income from every track.

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Red Herring: Ericsson on Friday confirmed reports that it has quietly closed down development and manufacturing of WiMAX products, making it the first major telecommunications equipment maker to pull out of the next generation wireless broadband technology.

The Swedish company’s decision to turn its back on WiMAX , seen as an alternative to third generation cellular phone technologies and as a way to connect homes or businesses to the internet, could prompt other equipment vendors to follow suit, said one analyst. “WiMAX offers nothing that cannot be offered by 3G (third generation mobile) based technologies,” said Mikael Persson, manager of strategy and business development Wideband CDMA at Ericsson.

Ericsson is a major manufacturer of 3G mobile phone technologies and was a late convert to WiMAX. The vendor in December 2004 joined the WiMAX Forum as a “principal member,” adding that it would “strongly contribute to the existing competence of the forum.”

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Akihabara: Not everybody has 3G or 3.5G with HSDPA but that doesn’t prevent manufacturers from going further. Every geek knows that future wireless communications will have to go through WiMAX, and we were presenting yesterday 3 Samsung products equipped with this technology.

So far, only a handful of us were able to see what it does in real life, but Samsung is now demonstrating what WiMAX can do at the 3GSM. More precisely, it’s the WiMAX WAVE 2, with 40Mbps download rates and 12MBps upload rates. For example, you can download a 700MB movie in 2mn 45seconds! We’re going to have to increase the disk space on our PDAs soon!

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EETimes: Samsung used it’s second annual Mobile Summit in New York City today to lay it’s stake in the ground on the future of wireless, and it is mobile WiMAX, based on the IEEE 802.16e standard.”4G is WiMAX. We’re very clear about that,” said Philip Garrison, mobile strategist for Samsung Telecommunications America (STA). (…)

The benefits of mobile WiMAX were outlined by Tom Jasny, vice president of wireless broadband networks. They include time to market, greater throughput, low latency, multimedia centric, greater broadcast capacity at 2 Mbits/s per user, vehicular mobility at up to 75 mph and broad global support with over 380 companies in the WiMAX Forum. (…)

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Yahoo: Nokia expects to start selling cell phones using the new WiMAX Internet technology in 2008, the world’s top handset maker said on Wednesday while unveiling network technology for WiMAX.

For now, a computer can connect to a WiMAX fast wireless Internet connection only when it is stationary, but a new mobile version of WiMAX will be available this year, which is expected to be a breakthrough for the technology.

Intel, Nokia, Samsung and Motorola all support the open-standard WiMAX as an alternative wireless broadband Internet connection alongside third generation mobile telephony networks, on which Internet access can get squeezed if networks fill up with voice callers.

Nokia said its WiMAX base stations will be commercially available for broadband operators in the 2.5 gigahertz band at the end of 2007 and for 3.5 gigahertz in the first quarter of 2008.

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