Broadcom announces its first 802.11ac Wi-Fi chip for smartphones
Online video consumption on multiple screens throughout the home is quickly becoming the norm — and all that video has a way of sucking up a home's bandwidth. Semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom believes that the gigabit Wi-Fi speeds …
Context & Ripple Effects
Broadcom is repeating a playbook it ran in December 2008, when its combo chip squeezed 802.11n, Bluetooth and FM into one low-cost part and helped make integrated wireless standard in phones. The new move extends that integration strategy to 802.11ac, with the company explicitly framing gigabit Wi-Fi as the answer to multi-screen home video eating household bandwidth.
The timing matters because Broadcom's chief mobile-silicon rival is Qualcomm: a US District Court granted Broadcom a permanent injunction against infringing Qualcomm 3G chips back in 2007, so the two firms have a history of fighting over who owns the radio inside the smartphone. An ac-first announcement is a bid to set that agenda on the next radio generation.
First-order effects
- Smartphone makers designing 2013 flagships gain a drop-in path to gigabit Wi-Fi from an established combo-chip supplier, without adding a second vendor for Bluetooth or FM.
- The announcement pressures router and access-point makers to ship 802.11ac hardware, since the phone-side chip delivers nothing without ac-capable networks in the home.
Second-order effects
- Qualcomm and other mobile chipset rivals face pressure to match ac support in their own integrated solutions or cede the premium-phone radio slot to Broadcom, continuing a rivalry that already produced a 2007 patent injunction.
- As more traffic shifts onto home Wi-Fi for video, broadband providers and router vendors gain a marketing hook built around gigabit-class wireless, shifting competition toward whole-home throughput rather than raw ISP speed.
Third-order effects
- If each Wi-Fi generation keeps landing in phones within a year or two of ratification, wireless silicon becomes a cadence-driven differentiator for handset makers, with combo-chip incumbents like Broadcom setting the pace.
- Sustained growth in multi-screen video consumption points toward the home network, not the cellular carrier, becoming the primary bottleneck that chipmakers compete to relieve.
The trend: Mobile chipmakers are racing to pull each new desktop-class Wi-Fi generation into smartphones as multi-screen home video turns household wireless bandwidth into the next competitive battleground.