Scott McGregor, the CEO of Broadcom, recently told attendees at the 2011 Bernstein Conference that he predicts his company and Qualcomm will likely be the two major players supplying handset vendors with mobile chips in the foreseeable future. His exact words: “There are only two companies that I am aware of that have the breadth of IP, the resources and the integration capability to really drive [systems on a chip] that would create this broad market. We see a number of competitors who are great at one thing, and we think in this market you have to be great at lots of things.” His thoughts puzzle us as we’re used to seeing Texas Instruments, and more recently NVIDIA, be the suppliers that most companies are opting to utilize for their new models; when they’re not using Qualcomm of course. There’s also ST-Ericsson, who has confirmed that they’ll be supplying Nokia with chipsets for their 2012 portfolio of Windows Phone devices. We want to know what devices released in the past few months actually feature Broadcom hardware?
When asked about Intel’s attempts at entering the wireless business, McGregor said that the application processor isn’t all that important when it comes to building solutions for the mobile market. Intel has the smarts to make fast chips, but the industry demands system on chips that feature everything they need to build a device, while also using as little energy as possible. With Intel’s purchase of Infineon’s wireless division nearly a year ago, they may finally be able to offer the market the integrated solution they seek. And don’t forget NVIDIA’s purchase of Icera last month. That should give them all the technical know how needed to offer their wickedly fast chips alongside a highly capable modem.
At the end of the day, everyone except Qualcomm uses the same generic ARM processors. Not like that’s a bad thing, it’s just that the only way to differentiate yourself is by what GPU you opt to pair with your APU, and what modem you choose to bundle, if you even choose to bundle at all, with your product.