Broadcom

Corporate profile

Broadcom Corporation NASDAQ: [BRCM] is a leading supplier of integrated circuits (ICs) for broadband communications. Founded in 1991 by Henry Samueli (chairman and CTO) and Henry Nicholas, it became a public company in 1998 and now employs over 4,200 people worldwide.

Broadcom's product line spans computer and telecommunication networking: the company has products for enterprise/metropolitan high-speed networks, as well as products for SOHO (small-office, home-office) networks. Products include transceiver and processor ICs for ethernet and wireless LANs, cable modems, digital subscriber line (DSL), servers, home networking devices (router, switches, port-concentators) and cellular phones (GSM/GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA).

Broadcom is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders.

The company also produces ICs for carrier access equipment, audio/video processors for digital set-top boxes and digital video recorders, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi transceivers, and RF receivers/tuners for satellite TV. Major customers include Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Dell, Lenovo, Linksys, Logitech, Cisco Systems and TiVo.

Broadcom is known as a fabless company. It outsources all semiconductor manufacturing to Asian merchant foundries, such as Chartered, SMIC, Silterra, TSMC, and UMC. The company is based in Irvine, California, with other research and development sites in Silicon Valley and Bangalore, India.

Consumer design wins

While Broadcom's business is strictly as a IC supplier to equipment manufacturers, Broadcom's company-name is known to home consumers through several high-profile consumer devices:

Broadcom supplies the video processor chip for Apple's 5th generation iPod.
In Q2 2005, Broadcom Corporation announced it will be providing Nintendo its “online solution on a chip” as deployed in millions of notebooks and PDAs across the globe, enabling Nintendo 802.11b connectivity with Wii and NDS. More specifically, Broadcom will provide Bluetooth connectivity for Wii's controller.
The Linksys (802.11G) wireless routers allow a greater degree of customization and configurability, through the loading of third-party open-source firmware.

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