LONDON (WiMAX Day). There are various estimates for the growth of WiMAX revenues and subscribers. One estimate from Juniper Research puts market sales at over USD 23 billion by 2014. According to some experts, mobile gaming will be one of the many killer apps needed for WiMAX to achieve such revenue growth.

One of the early proponents of WiMAX gaming is Posbro, a subsidiary of Posdata in Korea. The company made news recently when it announced its intent to launch an online game business for Sprint Nextel’s Xohm network.

Posbro had already unveiled its WiMAX gaming device, the G100, late last year. The G100 has a four-inch LCD touchscreen with slide-out game pad, and the company intends to launch the G100 by early 2009.

What’s more, Posbro has cut a deal with KT, the Korean mobile WiMAX operator, to provide an online game service via the G100.

A spokesman for Posbro recently told WiMAX Day that the company’s WiMAX game initiative has progressed beyond announcements. “Posbro is developing G100-optimised network game titles together with major game studios.”

For the moment, Posbro is keeping silent about their development partners, however sources say that Posbro is working with several Korean game developers. Posbro is also in talks with “major game developers in the United States to meet the various tastes of US gamers.”

Xohm says it’s ready to nurture video games in their expansive WiMAX ecosystem. “We are starting to develop relationships with the gaming industry and are exploring the mobile gaming opportunity with Posdata,” said Bin Shen, Sprint vice president, broadband. “We plan to collaborate closely with the game developer community.”

In theory, a marriage between WiMAX and games will deliver game content to hundreds of WiMAX-enabled devices, and at WiMAX network speeds that can measure up to advanced games with multiple players.

Yet what will it take for gaming enthusiasts to crawl out of their lairs, to find the same experience using smaller mobile devices?

In reality, there’s work to be done. The small screen size, limited processing power, and poor user interface of current mobile devices get in the way of gaming nirvana, and thus the “current mobile gaming experience is somewhat limited,” said Sprint’s Shen.

To achieve mass market success, devices will require larger screens, similar to the G100, or Sony’s portable PlayStation, the PSP.

The success of WiMAX gaming will also rely on the relationship between networks and game developers as well. In the case of Xohm’s WiMAX network, for example, Bin Shen said Xohm “will feature a growing set of APIs that allow developers to harness certain network characteristics to build better games.”