Intel, the world's biggest computer chipmaker, has reported a 12% rise in its quarterly earnings.
Profits for the three months to 27 September were $2bn (£1.1bn) compared with $1.7bn for the same period last year, said the company.
But Intel warned that the financial crisis made it hard to predict its earnings for the rest of the year.
The announcement came after US markets closed - but Intel shares rose 4.5% in after-hours trading.
The two competing 4G wireless systems, Wimax and Long Term Evolution (LTE), should be united, according to Intel.
Intel is the biggest supporter of Wimax, which offers high-speed, long-range wireless connections designed for the mobile net.
"In our view they ought to be harmonised," said Sean Maloney, head of sales and marketing at Intel.
LTE is a technology based on existing mobile networks and has broad support from many mobile bodies.
Fast start
Mr Maloney's comments are likely to be welcomed by the mobile industry, which fears the impact two rival standards could have on the market.
Earlier this year, Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin said he believed the two standards could be brought together.
LTE supporters
Nokia
Alcatel-Lucent
LG Electronics
FranceTelecom/Orange
T-Mobile
China Mobile
Huawei
NTT
Samsung
Telecom Italia
ZTE
Motorola
LTE is proving popular with handset manufacturers and mobile carriers because it is seen as an evolution to existing 3G networks.
By contrast, Wimax has won favour in the computer industry because its roots lie with wi-fi.
Both technologies have supporters who are in the two camps.
For instance Vodafone is currently trialling Wimax in Greece and Malta and its US subsidiary Verizon is trying out LTE.
The two systems are non-line of sight, and offer "optimal" broadband performance in a cell network between three and five kilometres in size.
LTE is also expected to offer higher speeds than Wimax, peaking at 100 Mbps download and 50 Mbps uploads.
Mr Maloney said the two technologies were "broadly similar... about 80% similar".
"The main difference is that Wimax is a couple of years ahead," he said.
Motorola has already said that 85% of the work and technology for Wimax equipment will be re-used in its designs for LTE equipment.
Mr Maloney said that customers would be "confused" by two competing 4G technologies.
>Nokia is backing both the Wimax and LTE technologies
"We would much prefer to see over a period of time that it looked to a global consumer that simply high-speed bandwidth was available."
He said Intel was "actively looking" at harmonisation.
"LTE is still a little way away; as it starts to show up we will be looking to see how we can harmonise with it," he added.
It was technically possible that the chipset Intel is introducing later this year to cover wi-fi and Wimax, could also be used for LTE, he said.
"We don't have any plans to do that yet," added Mr Maloney. "It would certainly be a nice long term goal."
Falling behind
Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight, said harmonisation was a laudable goal.
"We cannot keep having this situation where different parts of the world have different technologies," he said.
"Wide area broadband networks are critical," said Mr Wood. "We know there's an insatiable appetite for those speeds."
While data speeds on mobile networks were accelerating there was a danger they could fall behind again, said Mr Wood.
"The gap will open up again with fixed line networks," he said, "though some of that can be made up with HSDPA and HSUPA."
LTE is not expected to reach mass adoption until 2012 while the first Wimax networks have already been rolled out in the US and Japan.
Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel, said 10 million people would be using Wimax by the end of 2008, rising to "hundreds of millions two years after that".
To clarify, the Moorestown platform is based on Intel’s Atom processor which will still use the Core 2 Duo instruction set. This means bringing an amazing amount of power and flexibility to the iPhone, especially when it comes to software. In addition, reports are telling us these chips could cut idle power consumption 10 times over.
The platform likely wont be making a move to the iPhone until 2010 according to AnandTech, so all recent or considering iPhone buyers can rest assured that they won’t be missing out on this at least for another while.
To give you a sense of how small these processors are, the image above is a picture of Intel’s Atom processor, formerly known as Silverthorne.
These chips are literally the future of mobile computing and could end up in a “MacTouch” device, an idea I have mentioned before. Not only could these chips bring seamless integration between computers and mobile devices for software, but they can bring the horsepower to run those applications.
With platforms such as Moorestown, “The Future is Calling,” and Apple is waiting to pick up.
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