34 Days of OHA: Member Profiles in Alphabetical Order Day 4 - Broadcom Corporation

For 34 days we'll be profiling one OHA member each day, in alphabetical order. The feature has been on hiatus for a few days, but we're now focused and ready to continue.

Company Name: Broadcom Corporation

How the OHA site classifies them: Semiconductor Company

What the OHA site says about them: Broadcom Corporation is a major technology innovator and global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, providing products that enable the delivery of voice, video, data and multimedia to and throughout the home, the office and the mobile environment.

What they do: They build chips.

Wikipedia proclaims them "...among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders." Their site list their offerings as including Bluetooth products, network processing solutions, digital cable products, digital TV solutions, satellite devices, DSL chipsets, mobile multimedia processors, mobile phone solutions, networking components, security processors, I/O integrated circuits, storeage solutions, VOIP solutions, WLAN solutions, and Ethernet solutions. They got solutions.

Broadcom is probably best known for their NICs. There's a good chance that the network card in the PC you're currently reading this article on was designed by Broadcom.

Of course, Broadcom doesn't really build any of this. Rather, it employs Asian people to do the building for them.

In July 2007 the US International Trade Commission blocked blocked the import of cell phones based around Broadcom's future OHA cohort Qualcomm's chips because those chips infringed on the former's patents, A ruling against Qualcomm resulted in that company paying up.

What they bring to OHA and Android: Semiconductors. And, given their history with Qualcomm, domestic violence.

Earlier this month Broadcom announced a partnership with EA with the goal of delivering high performance gaming for mobile phones. EA will be delivering titles designed for Broadcom's VideoCore® Mobile Multimedia Solutions. We can only hope that some of these titles wll show up on Android.