Notable was the lack of news from Sprint Nextel on its WiMax venture with Clearwire, cable operators Comcast and Time Warner and Silicon Valley giants Google and Intel. Sprint Chief Executive Dan Hesse was expected to announce during his keynote speech this morning a $5 billion venture between the companies. No dice. Instead, Hesse said the company will move forward with its WiMax plans, called Xohm, but didn't mention any partners. Sprint, which has suffered from a customer exodus, has bet on WiMax technology to gain future subscribers. Yet finding funding for the nationwide network, which is estimated to cost around $5 billion, has been challenging. "The lack of an announcement raises questions about whether or not a deal will happen after all," said an analyst.

WiMax is an unproven technology with questionable support beyond Sprint and Intel. Network World reports that Sprint has soft-launched WiMax networks in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., so it's possible that Apple will build in the hardware in preparation for Sprint's nationwide rollout in April. This would be a huge win for WiMax, which suffered a blow when Sprint and Clearwire abandoned plans for a WiMax joint venture. But Apple has proven it can popularize technologies — think USB in the original iMac, and Wi-Fi in the iBook — even with a scant market share. If anything, its position is stronger now than ever before.