One senior manager of handset marketing at Sprint Nextel, Trevor Van Norman, estimates he has helped launch 150 different phones over six years, and this week helped , a smartphone seen as a boon for Sprint's WiMax service now in 27 cities and operated by Clearwire.

Having the first WiMax-capable phone on the market will , even as some analysts predict only a minor market share for WiMax compared with LTE by 2014, he told Computerworld .

"Having the [HTC EVO 4G] brings the [WiMax] message home," Van Norman said. Analysis firm Infonetics recently gave WiMax only a 3% U.S. market share in 2014, probably because essentially only one company, Sprint, will offer WiMax.

By comparison, LTE will be offered by Verizon Wireless, AT&T and eventually T-Mobile USA, he noted.

Just about everybody agrees LTE subscribers will be much bigger than WiMax, although several analysts surveyed this week said they believe WiMax will grow to a larger share than 3% by 2014.