The less chips you need to put in a phone, the less compromises you must make designing it and the less money it costs to make. Chipmaker Broadcom Corp. announced yesterday that its BCM4325 combo radio chip will work with Google's Android operating system. Since the BCM4325 manages Bluetooth, WiFi, and FM, one chip will do the work of three.
"The move will serve to boost the Android platform," predicts Stacey Higginbotham in a Salon.com article, "because...smaller and less expensive devices will be able to run on it. In contrast, the 3G iPhone from Apple has a Wi-Fi radio from Marvell, Bluetooth from CSR and no FM receiver."
How much does Android need the boost? More than three months after T-Mobile released the G1, it's still the only Android-based phone, although more Android phones will be released later this year by Samsung, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson.
Broadcom certainly thinks Android has a future. "Two of the most exciting trends in the handset industry are the growing popularity of Android and the transition to combo chips for connectivity," the press release quotes Chris Bergey, Director of Broadcom's Embedded WLAN line of business.Broadcom's announcement did not name any handset manufacturers that had committed to using the new chip.
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