Google sells its ownership stake in Clearwire
Things just don't look too good for Clearwire. Even though the HTC EVO 4G was America's first 4G phone, and made use of Clearwire's 4G network, WiMAX never really seemed to catch on. To make matters worse, as Clear's finances became murkier, the 4G rollout came to a screeching halt and left lots of EVO users behind on Sprint's sometimes-awesome-sometimes-terrible 3G network.
And now, the latest news is that Google is selling its ownership stake in the company and will take around a $453 million loss. (Google originally invested about $500 million in the company, and is selling its shares for $47 million.) And Google's lack of confidence in the company is obviously affecting others' confidence in the company, as it closed down almost 7% Friday afternoon.
So how will this effect Clearwire's plans to roll out LTE Advanced sometime in the future? While I'm not quite sure about that yet, what I can say is that I'm starting to believe that Sprint's kiss of death is, indeed, very real.
[Engadget]
