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Rumor: Broadcom Phasing Out Wi-Fi Chip Business (digitimes.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the allocating-resources dept.

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.

5 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Yay! by klingens · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's hope this rumour is right. One less shitty vendor with shitty WLAN chips. Then Apple and Dell have to look elswhere to fsck over their customers with crappy hardware without working (Linux) drivers.

    1. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      You should start manufacturing WLAN chips, you sound like you know what you're talking about.

    2. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You sound like someone who's never had to deal with the utter mess that bcmwl driver was.

    3. Re:Yay! by Carewolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Let's hope this rumour is right. One less shitty vendor with shitty WLAN chips. Then Apple and Dell have to look elswhere to fsck over their customers with crappy hardware without working (Linux) drivers.

      Be careful what you wish for. Broadcom is not the worst offender anymore.

    4. Re: Yay! by the_humeister · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The strangest thing: Raspberry Pi uses a Broadcom SoC for all 3 versions, and everything is open source. When I heard they were going to use Broadcom for their device and have open source drivers for everything, needless to say, I was skeptical. And yet they delivered, even with the GPU.