Nokia is holding fire on mobile WiMax until 2008 as it waits for the market to develop.

The company sees fixed WiMax (802.16d) as complementary to Wi-Fi hotspots, and will address the technology during 2006. But Nokia confirmed that it will not be getting into mobile WiMax (802.16e) until 2008.

"We are investing in WiMax but no-one knows how that market will develop," Mikko Salminen, director of fixed mobile convergence marketing at Nokia, told vnunet.com.

"We are waiting for at least a one per cent take-up by the market. Otherwise the market is dead."

Salminen explained that Nokia is usually early to market with new technologies, but that the company had started selling Wi-Fi systems three years too early in 1999/2000. The large scale market did not really start until 2003.

"Wide area coverage with WiMax from a cost perspective is tricky, and the business case is not there yet," said Robin Lindahl, vice president of radio networks marketing at Nokia.

"WiMax is not competing with 3G. It's a complementary technology best suited to Wi-Fi hotspots. Internet High Speed Packet Access is the best solution going forward because it can drive down operators' data costs."