A report said Asustek is going to abandon offering WiMAX for its popular range of little machines called the Eee unless it's contract work specifically for a customer.

According to Taiwanese wire Digitimes, Asus has evaluated WiMAX for two quarters and has had a 'Road to Damascus' moment and realised the WiMAX market won't be mature in 2009. The wire quotes sources saying it will offer WiMAX on some notebooks aimed at the US market. And, indeed, Intel chipsets which include WiMAX support will be around pretty soon.

Apparently, Asustek was hoping to include WiMAX support in as much as 15 per cent of its notebook by year end. A few weeks ago, in an senior Intel executive Sean Maloney told the Examiner that the success of WiMAX largely depended on broadband spectrum being made available. Quite a few countries are holding back - but Europe and the UK will hold auctions for redundant TV bandwidth, probably beginning next year. X

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