拆解显示博通挤掉Marvell成苹果最大WiFi供应商

Report: Broadcom leads Wi-Fi design wins

Rick Merritt

Broadcom leads a pack of Wi-Fi chip suppliers with the broadest set of design wins and as many as 50 million units in sales in Apple products alone, according to a new report.

"Broadcom is the clear leader in 802.11 product offerings and design wins, especially with regard to 802.11n [and] its integrated Wi-Fi/BT/FM [chip] is a clear winner in the mobile space," said the report from UBM TechInsights, part of United Business Media, the publisher of EE Times.

Broadcom's design wins span multiple Apple products including the latest versions of the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It also has wins in as many as five HTC handsets and routers from both Netgear and Linksys.

The report also profiles Broadcom's top Wi-Fi rivals—Marvell, Atheros and Texas Instruments. In addition, it covers second tier players such as CSR, MediaTek and ST-Ericsson.

Marvell's Wi-Fi chips were designed into the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G, but it lost the sockets to Broadcom in more recent models. Marvell was still able to expand its Wi-Fi business gaining design wins in the Amazon Kindle, Sony Playstation 3 and PSP handheld game device and as many as six smartphones from Research in Motion, the report said.

Wi-Fi chips make up as much as 80 percent of the revenues of Atheros, currently being acquired by Qualcomm. In TechInsights teardowns, the chips mainly have been found in access points and adapter cards, the report said.

TI has won sockets in a number of handsets from HTC, Motorola, RIM and Sony-Ericsson, including the Motorola Droid, the report said. However, UBM TechInsights has yet to find in any of its system teardowns TI's 802.11n chips, including an integrated 11n/BT/FM/GPS device launched last year.

Most of the current Wi-Fi chips are made in 130 and 65nm process technologies, with new designs moving to the 40nm node. Broadcom uses as many as five foundries and Atheros uses six to make its parts, the report said.