Broadcom will dominate connectivity in 2013

Broadcom will continue to dominate the connectivity market in 2013 helped by the demand for combo ICs delivering multiple wireless standards, says ABI Research.

“Increased diversification and building out product portfolios to include many wireless connectivity technologies is crucial to vendors’ current and future success,” says Peter Cooney, wireless connectivity practice director at ABI.

Standalone wireless connectivity ICs will continue to be very important as newer technologies such as Bluetooth Smart, WiGig, and NFC penetrate high volume applications and are increasingly adopted in developing markets such as sports & fitness, automotive, and retail.

Connectivity combos (i.e. those with two or more wireless connectivity technologies integrated) will continue to see strong shipment and revenue growth particularly in high volume consumer markets such as laptops, tablets, and TVs.

Platform solutions will see the strongest growth (from a smaller base) as these enable OEMs to achieve even faster time to market in very competitive areas such as low-end smartphones.

“In the next few years we will see some very important milestones achieved for the wireless connectivity market,” adds Cooney,  “in 2013 cumulative shipments of Bluetooth-enabled devices will surpass 10 billion and Wi-Fi enabled devices will surpass 10bn cumulative shipments in 2015. This clearly shows the level of penetration into the electronics market that wireless connectivity technologies have achieved, and there is a lot more to come as the consumers’ appetite for wire free solutions will continue unabated.”

In 2013 the number of standards-based wireless connectivity chips shipped will exceed 5bn including standalone Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC, and ZigBee, as well as connectivity combo ICs and platform solutions.