Not a week has gone by since I outlined my fears of Qualcomm’s involvement with bidding on spectrum in India and a new article from Rethink Wireless crosses my desk describing in brief and obscure details how Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor will be featured in Sprint’s first WiMAX handheld released in the US.

In that linked video, one of the highlights is animated wallpapers, which makes me discount any of the remainder of the content in said demo because functionality, connectivity and price are far more important than animated wallpapers. “I didn’t pay $600 for this device so I could have animated wallpapers.”

So does my fear of Qualcomm interfering with WiMAX’s chances of success -despite Clear’s horrible network deployment and pricing structure- change with respect to Qualcomm’s chipset being used in WiMAX-enabled handhelds? Not for a second. In fact it’s further enforced as Qualcomm would become a choke-hold on WiMAX versus LTE technology. At any point Qualcomm could decide to jack up pricing for manufactures making WiMAX devices to further promote LTE technology. (This would take place in a world where LTE was being marketed, deployed and supported better than WiMAX, which is entirely possible (and probable) given the poor direction Clear’s taken to support WiMAX.) I would add that Qualcomm’s business model shouldn’t just be to just sell as much as possible: even if WiMAX is losing the battle against LTE, Qualcomm shouldn’t just continue to sell chip sets to WiMAX-handheld manufacturers because they’re requested, Qualcomm should focus on championing a use of their chip set for a given technology. If that’s LTE (or WiMAX) then they should focus on making the chip sets and product offerings as incredible and capable as possible for that technology.

Fear asides, I wonder if good things will be coming from Qualcomm, despite the my sometimes frustrating experience with the company.