Broadcom and ST recently got the Big OK from Nokia to be chip suppliers; TI and Qualcomm felt the chill of a turned shoulder. Scott McGregor, CEO of Broadcom, tells how he did it.
"Because of their huge market share, Nokia are fearful of people who want to buy into their business, people who offer a really low price to get into their supply chain,” says McGregor, “Nokia is looking for people with whom they can have a long-term relationship.”
At one time, apparently, Nokia was wary of fabless companies like Broadcom, because they didn’t think a fabless company could have total control over quality. Broadcom was to change that thinking.
“We got a break when they asked us to do something,” says McGregor, “it was an integrated FM plus Bluetooth product which they couldn’t get from anyone else.”
“We designed it over a weekend”, recalls McGregor, “we worked all weekend. We told them it would work first time. Six months later we showed them working silicon.”
“That surprised them on the execution side”, says McGregor, “then we started taking about baseband.”
“That was the genesis of our relationship with Nokia”, says McGregor, “we call them a ‘Teaching Customer’. Nokia, Apple, Google are all teaching customers. They are customers who really push us. They want impossible things. They really stretch us.”
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