Likewise, no small Wimax chipset companies have announced future support for 802.16m and no infrastructure supplier will contractually commit to upgrading its 802.16e product to 802.16m. Even on the telecom side, few greenfield operators are deploying Wimax for mobile broadband services.
"It is important for the Wimax operators of today to pay particular care in protecting themselves from the consolidating ecosystem and to begin to map out their long-term network evolution plans," Immendorf said.
Maravedis, meanwhile, acknowledges that 802.16m has yet to gain acceptance among Wimax operators. But the standard has already received support from chipmakers Beceem and Intel and vendors such as Samsung, Huawei, ZTE, Alvarion and Cisco.
Clearwire has announced it is considering preliminary 802.16m trials in the US in 2011, and Yota seems equally likely to become one of the first 801.16m adopters.
The standard is due to be ratified later this year. Maravedis predicts the first 802.16m dongles in late 2011 and more widespread commercial deployments from 2012.
Research firm In-Stat, meanwhile, predicts that while LTE will become the 4G standard of choice, mobile Wimax's lead-to-market will allow it to build a considerable lead over the next few years.
Even by 2013, there will be more than five times as many mobile Wimax subscribers than LTE subscribers, In-Stat said.
In-Stat analyst Allen Nogee said LTE has a number of issues to work out - including a shortage of spectrum, signal-to-noise ratio and the lack of a patent and royalty pool - before it will be able to claim its place as the dominant 4G technology.
"It's clear that the shift toward 4G LTE will be gradual and protracted," he said.