If the showroom at CES represented a battlefield -- where hundreds of consumer electronics and technology companies were pitted against each other -- then Broadcom
Google's
Haier's first Blu-Ray players for the U.S.? They run on Broadcom silicon ... just like Blu-Ray players from Samsung, LG, and Best Buy's
Chances are that some of the 3-D TVs grabbing headlines at CES also had a Broadcom chip or two inside. Thus far, the company's managed to get its chips into TV sets from the likes of Sharp, LG, and Vizio. And as with the Blu-ray player market, the potential for growing chip content per box is definitely there, because of the additional processing power needed by 3-D sets and a growing number of 2-D and 3-D sets being equipped with Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth.
To top it all off, Dell
Going into CES, the Consumer Electronics Association named Blu-ray players, LCD TVs, and laptops (driven by netbooks) as the only major growth areas for the consumer electronics industry in 2009. It expects more of the same in a largely flat 2010. Thanks to years of smart and aggressive R&D investments, Broadcom is making its presence strongly felt in all three of these markets as the year gets under way. And the same also applies for smartphones -- not listed as a distinct market from mobile phones in general by the CEA, but expected by IDC to show 20% shipment growth this year. Broadcom has targeted this space with its combo chips, and the company's baseband processors are now found in Samsung and Nokia phones and are rumored to be part of future HTC models.
Factor in a gradual pickup in corporate IT spending and the effect it should have on Broadcom's Ethernet, voice-over-IP, and network processor businesses, and this digital arms dealer could easily be looking at a banner year -- one in which its revenue growth eclipses even the 19% pace the market has already pegged.