Broadcom

Apple poaching Broadcom talent as rumors of in-house baseband chip development intensify

Following talk of Apple's rumored initiative that would have it develop its own baseband chips for 2015 iPhones and iPads in-house, AppleInsider has learned the firm's recently poached a pair of longtime semiconductor engineers from chipmaker Broadcom.

Both men are experienced at building RF hardware and have led the effort to produce baseband transceivers used by Nokia and Samsung devices.

Apple counts Broadcom as its supplier: the iPhone 5s uses a Broadcom touchscreen controller and the handset's Wi-Fi chip by Murata is based on Broadcom's BCM4334 module, according to a teardown analysis by repair experts over at iFixIt...

Broadcom launches Gigabit Wi-Fi chip that will likely power the next iPhone

Imagination Technologies, the fabless British semiconductor maker, yesterday at Mobile World Congress detailed its new PowerVR graphics which outperforms Nvidia's Tegra K1 platform and is a likely candidate for the next iPhone's GPU. And now, another premium silicon vendor has announced a chip that could just as easily find its way into future iOS devices.

I'm talking about Broadcom, whose Wi-Fi chips and other controller components are used in the iPhone 5s and iPad lineup. The Irvine, California based firm announced at Mobile World Congress a new fifth-generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi component which doubles data throughput and increases Wi-Fi coverage by up to 30 percent.

Should Apple choose to tap it, the iPhone 6 and the next iPad will adopt Gigabit Wi-Fi aka 802.11ac, the latest and greatest standard in wireless networking for the consumer market...