Broadcom to target Symbian cellphones with comms processors

Stan Beer
Thursday, 26 July 2007 03:12

IT Industry - Strategy

Communications chipmaker Broadcom plans to make a range of chips for wireless applications on mobile phones using the Symbian S60 smartphone development platform. The semiconductor company intends to bring to market a range of 3G mobile, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS processor products.

S60 smartphone software is developed by Nokia and licensed to a number of other handset manufacturers, such as Samsung, LG and Panasonic.

Broadcom has a range of chips intended for the smartphone market, including the BCM2153 7.2Mbps HSDPA multimedia baseband processor, the BCM2820 VideoCore Applications Processor and BCM2724 VideoCore Co-processor, the BCM4325 Bluetooth+WiFi+FM device and BCM2048 Bluetooth + FM radio transceiver. Broadcom also recently acquired GlobalLocate for GPS solutions.

According to Broadcom, being a member of the S60 community will give the company access to a market of about 50 million handsets a year.
 
“Broadcom joining the S60 community is a very positive development that will further enhance the silicon resources available to smartphone makers committed to S60 software,” said Matti Vänskä, Vice President, Mobile Software Sales and Marketing, Nokia. “The combination of advanced S60 software capabilities and pre-integration with Broadcom’s silicon solutions will help drive new smartphone designs and shorten time-to-market for introducing these products.”
 
“Broadcom is very proud to join the S60 Product Creation Community, which allows us to offer our advanced mobile solutions together with the world’s leading Mobile Open OS platform,” said Yossi Cohen, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom’s Mobile Platforms Group. “This development is a strong validation of Broadcom’s commitment to establishing itself as the technology leader in the cellular market, and we look forward to working closely with the community to quickly bring superior and exciting handsets to market.”