A month after launching its first ‘fourth-generation’ smartphone, the Evo 4G, Sprint Nextel has announced the impending release of another 4G device.

The ‘Samsung Epic’ will use Sprint’s high-end WiMAX mobile broadband network, allowing for lightning fast data downloads. It will feature a 1-GHz Hummingbird processor, 16GB microSD card slot, and 5-megapixel digital camera with HD video recording capabilities.

The Epic’s touchscreen display will be slightly smaller than that of the Evo (4 inches rather than 4.3), but it will come equipped with a full sliding QWERTY keyboard.

The Epic 4G will be available through Sprint retail stores “in the coming months,” the company says. Pricing details have yet to be released.

The global WiMAX equipment market is suffering a slowdown this year, but is set to resurge in 2010 as carriers begin to act on postponed orders, Infonetics Research predicts in a new report.

“Having grown at lung-busting speed for a couple of years, a slowdown and pause for breath for the WiMAX equipment market probably would have been inevitable even without the recession,” explains Infonetics’ directing analyst, Richard Webb. “As it is, economic conditions are exacerbating the pause, with worldwide fixed and mobile WiMAX equipment revenue down 16% from the previous quarter, and further declines expected in 2Q09. However, for 802.16e, the decline is temporary: a positive growth curve should start for the mobile WiMAX market toward the end of this year and continue through 2010.”

In recent years, growth in the WiMAX market has been fueled primarily by developing economies, but the next wave of expansion will be helped along by the development of 802.16e-based mobile broadband networks in developed countries, such as Clearwire’s growing network in the U.S.

As of the first quarter of 2009, Alvarion was the world’s leading supplier of WiMAX equipment, followed by Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, Huawei, Cisco, and Samsung.

American cable giant, Comcast, has announced plans to offer a 4G mobile broadband service, challenging established cell phone carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

The Comcast-branded service will use Clearwire Corp.‘s WiMAX network, which allows laptop users to access the internet wirelessly when no Wi-Fi hotspot is available. It will offer download speeds of up to 4-Megabits per second, faster than any other mobile broadband network currently available in the U.S.

Comcast plans to introduce the wireless service in Portland, Oregon tomorrow, at an introductory price of $49.95/month for the first year. It will be extended to Atlanta, Chicago, and Philadelphia by the end of 2009.

Struggling telecom equipment maker, Nortel Networks, said yesterday that it will abandon a deal to sell Alvarion Ltd.’s WiMAX equipment, and concentrate instead on well-established relationships with cellular carriers.

In recent months, Nortel has hailed WiMAX as a promising wireless broadband technology. The company entered bankruptcy protection earlier this month, however, and is currently restructuring in hopes of regaining financial stability.

“We are taking rapid action to narrow our strategic focus to areas where we can drive maximum return on investment,” said Nortel’s president of carrier networks, Richard Lowe. “Our continued success in the wireless business requires us to focus our energy on opportunities with long-standing customers. This will position Nortel more effectively to capitalize on future resurgence of carrier spend levels and drive value to the business.”

Nortel pledged to work closely with Alvarion to continue supporting existing WiMAX customers.

Mobile WiMAX equipment revenues nearly quadruped in the third quarter of 2008 (compared to the third quarter of 2007), as carriers around the world began to invest significantly in the technology.

“With LTE still a couple of years away, WiMAX has, in fact, become the first next generation technology with commercial service,” noted Scott Siegler, a senior analyst with the Dell’Oro Group. “Mobile WiMAX revenues were very strong in the third quarter of last year, and we anticipate revenue for the fourth quarter to set another record.”

But the apparent head start enjoyed by WiMAX providers could be threatened by ongoing economic woes, according to the Dell’Oro Group’s report.

“As we look into 2009, we expect the WiMAX market to be hit rather hard by the economic downturn,” Siegler said. “Building out brand new networks from scratch requires tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars of capital. Compounding the tightening in the credit markets, the increasing cost of capital and the decrease in demand for broadband data as consumer spending weakens, we anticipate many network buildouts will be put on hold or delayed into 2010. With initial LTE rollouts coming in the 2010 to 2011 timeframe, these delays will shorten the time to market advantage WiMAX currently has over LTE.”