5. Dual-band and a UWB sighting

The 11a and dual-band market appears to still belong to Atheros, but perhaps not for long. I saw at least one design using Inprocomm's 5320 MAC/BB chip, but didn't get to see what they were using for a radio. I also saw RealTek's RTL8185L / RTL8255 combo in an 11a/b/g CardBus card from AboCom (below).

Abocom a/b/g card using Realtek chipset

The dual-band market bears watching, given that the trend for multimedia (video) streaming products is away from 11g toward 11a. The market abhors a single source, so Atheros should expect vendors to at least check out the newcomers.

Finally, I didn't see any WiMax-based products, though there were lots of outdoor APs and routers in weatherized enclosures to be found. But look what I found at, in of all places, MSI's booth!

The only UWB found at Computex

Yup, that's a streaming HD video demo using Motorola / Freescale's Direct Sequence UWB technology. It's interesting to note that an OEM/ODM manufacturer who asked me not to identify them also said they were working on UWB products using the Motorola / Freescale solution.