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Rumor: Broadcom Phasing Out Wi-Fi Chip Business (digitimes.com)
jones_supa writes: According to sources in Taiwan at the heart of the electronics industry, Broadcom is looking to phase out its Wi-Fi chip business in a move to streamline its workforce and product offerings following its acquisition by Avago Technologies. In general, the Wi-Fi chip business yields relatively low gross margins compared to other product lines due to fierce price competition in the market for mass-market applications (such as notebooks, tablets, TVs and smartphones). Companies such as MediaTek, Realtek Semiconductor and RDA Microelectronics have already received a pull-in of short lead-time orders from Broadcom's customers in the Wi-Fi sector. Following its merger with Avago, Broadcom is expected to allocate more RD resources to solutions in the fiber-optic and server sectors. In addition, Broadcom has almost halved the workforce stationed at its office in Taipei.
Well, I did rejoice when they announced their brcmfmac ans brcmsmac drivers, except that the latter was then basically abandoned, with new hardware support never being added apart from the limited initial offering, and that's the driver supposed to cover their laptop chips!
So yeah, it's Intel or Atheros/Qualcomm for me right now. Realtek has general good linux support, but their chips cover only the lower end of the market. Mediatek is what was once known as Ralink, their support used to be good, I wonder how it is now. Any other current vendors I did not mention?