Broadcom CEO Discusses LTE Baseband Processors

Jul 13, 2010 18:47 Hiroki Yomogita, Nikkei Electronics

Broadcom Corp disclosed that it is now developing baseband processors for the LTE (long term evolution) next-generation communication standard.

Scott A McGregor, president and CEO of Broadcom, revealed it to Nikkei Electronics. The company has been silent on the issues such as the shipment dates of its baseband processors for LTE. Though he did not disclose the shipment dates, he said, "We will certainly deal with chips for LTE. This is a very firm market. And LTE-related technologies will be very important for us."

Broadcom has been providing its baseband processors for (GSM, EDGE and 3G) mobile phones to Nokia Corp, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and other companies. The number of shipments of its baseband processors is growing at a high rate, contributing to the company's business performance, McGregor said. Broadcom recorded its highest sales figure of US$1.46 billion in the first quarter of 2010.

In regard to baseband processors for LTE, McGregor said that they will be first employed mainly for data cards such as of USB adapters rather than for mobile phones.

"At first, we will start from the data card market," he said. "The LTE standard allows a high speed communication, but it increases power consumption. Therefore, it is more suited to adapters for PCs than to adapters for mobile phones. When the power consumption is reduced by scaling down forming processes for baseband processors, mobile phones will be targets."

Broadcom will deal with not only FDD-LTE but also TD-LTE, which is expected to be widely used in China. As for WiMAX, McGregor said, "The market for WiMAX will continuously shrink. We consider that LTE will be the mainstream. While services for WiMAX partially started, LTE is supported by many infrastructure firms."

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