Broadcom backs Nokia's S60: another blow to Motorola

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 26 July 2007 07:38

Opinion and Analysis

Broadcom announced this week that had joined the S60 Product Creation Community. This will give it access to software, technology and S60 ecosystem resources.

The move was welcomed by Nok. Matti Vanska, vice president, mobile software sales and marketing, said: "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. 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 said its S60 optimised silicon would include versions of its BCM2153 7.2Mbps HSDPA multimedia baseband processor; mobile multimedia processors, including the BCM2820 VideoCore applications processor and BCM2724 VideoCore co-processor; BCM4325 combined Bluetooth+WiFi+FM device and BCM2048 Bluetooth + FM radio transceiver as well as GPS chips from its recent acquisition, GlobalLocate.

Broadcom is one of the world's largest fabless semiconductor companies, with 2006 revenue of $US3.67 billion claiming one of the broadest intellectual property portfolios addressing both wired and wireless transmission of voice, video and data. Its support for S60 should five a significant boost to what is already a leading platform.