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Beceem

Beceem
Based: Santa Clara
Founded: 2003
www.beceem.com

Why It's Fierce: Just two years old, Beceem has become the first to release a terminal chipset based on the 802.16e mobile WiMAX standard. With analysts predicting the WiMAX chip market to be worth nearly $1 billion by 2009, and still a relatively small number of chip developers participating in the WiMAX market at this point, Beceem has positioned itself to dominate. And it’s pretty smart about its target markets, too. India could very well be the biggest market for WiMAX, and Santa Clara-based Beceem has put itself right in the heart of development, investing significantly in R&D and making a commitment to accelerate WiMAX deployments in that country. Several Indian service providers have already acquired spectrum licenses to deploy wireless broadband services and are planning early rollouts in 2006 to a market with a population of 1 billion hungry for just basic Internet access.

What to look for: With investments from some high-profile companies like NTT DoCoMo, Samsung and Intel, look for Beceem to integrate its technology globally.
Beceem will play a primary role in Samsung WiBro handsets in South Korea, work with Intel to bring WiMAX products to trial and help DoCoMo evaluate the viability of mobile WiMAX as a wireless broadband technology with a possibility for a commercial partnership.