Sequans' WiMAX biz suffers but company eyes LTE growth

Clearwire's (NASDAQ:CLWR) shift from WiMAX to LTE socked it to chipmaker Sequans Communications, which lost $9 million during the first quarter of 2012, down from an operating profit of $2.3 million one year earlier. The vendor's first-quarter 2012 revenues of $4.1 million represented an 84 percent decrease from revenues in the prior-year period. "The primary reason for the decrease was the absence of sales to the company's historically largest customer, following changes in the WiMAX market in the United States in the second half of 2011," said Sequans.

"As expected, our Q1 product revenues were generated primarily by WiMAX customers for emerging-market deployments," said Georges Karam, Sequans CEO. He said Sequans has begun shipping LTE products to markets such as Brazil and Australia, received initial orders for its dual-mode LTE/WiMAX chip and expects to see LTE revenues ramp up in the second half of the year based on design wins for major LTE markets such as the U.S., India and China. Paris-based Sequans also announced last week that it had become a participant in Verizon's LTE Innovation Center. Release