Broadcom Slingshots Into 4G Chipsets Through Beceem Acquisition

​Broadcom Corporation announced its plans to acquire Beceem Communications for $316 million, which is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2011. Broadcom has been quiet around 4G, but of course has been long planning and even engineering 4G solutions. This has been rumored to include WiMAX in case the market were to grow large enough for Broadcom's tastes.

This acquisition has been primarly around LTE, of course, but the WiMAX side of Beceem's business is viewed by Broadcom as a nice extra. Beceem's coming WiMAX/LTE chipsets were even more interesting to Broadcom, as they will allow Broadcom to add a "snap-on" solution to its existing WWAN and wireless connectivity chipsets. The fact that Beceem was starting to make decent revenues did not hurt its attractiveness, but one of the primary deciding factors in the acquisition was the architecture in Beceem's 4G chipset design. More detail around this architecture and the potential business this opens up for Broadcom will be provided in an upcoming ABI Insight.