HELSINKI (WiMAX Day). While 3G networks struggle to launch in Europe, Motorola is already looking past 3G service and pinning its hopes on the success of WiMAX.

In an interview with Motorola CTO Padmasree Warrior by Kauppalehti, a daily business newspaper in Finland, Warrior said she expected WiMAX will be a similar success to the established GSM technology. In an article by Reuters, Warrior was quoted saying that “downloading a song into a handset would take three seconds using WiMAX. The user experience is completely different to current technologies”.

The dynamic CTO of Motorola also emphasised that the success of WiMAX required support from the mobile and semiconductor industry, which Motorola is already a strong backer, and she added that Motorola’s Finnish-based rival Nokia was “firmly with WiMAX.”

According to the Reuters report, Warrior stated the 3G extension of GSM faced problems in terms of speed and cost. “Markets for WiMAX will open earlier than for Super-3G or 3G LTE, the extension for 3G technology,” she added.

As for the immediate future of WiMAX, Warrior was quoted in the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat stating that Motorola would soon launch a GSM version of its Moto Q enterprise handset, which currently only supports the CDMA 3G standard, and we can only hope that a WiMAX version is not far behind. The Moto Q is a multimedia phone that is cross between a BlackBerry and a video iPod.

Over the past two years, Motorola has made a series of phones with a greater emphasis on style and design than in the past. It has also worked closely with companies such as Apple Computer, Yahoo and Kodak to improve the functionality of it’s phones.

Padmasree Warrior is executive vice president and chief technology officer for Motorola where she directs the company’s $3.5 billion R&D efforts and has operational responsibility for Motorola Labs, the global software group and emerging early-stage businesses. Warrior leads a global team of more than 7,000 technologists, prioritising technology programs, creating value from intellectual property, guiding creative research from innovation through early-stage commercialization, and influencing standards and roadmaps. She also serves as a technology advisor to the office of the chairman and to the board’s technology and design committee. Photo courtesy of Motorola.