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Broadcom Chips in Blockbuster iPad

By Sarah Tolkoff
Monday, April 5, 2010
Orange County Business Journal

Broadcom Corp. could see a boost from Apple Inc.’s latest toy—the iPad tablet, according to reports.

A handful of teardowns—where the device is stripped to see which companies have supplied parts—have confirmed that the Irvine-based company has chips inside.

Apple said that it sold more than 300,000 iPads on Saturday, including pre-orders of the device, exceeding the debut weekend projections.

“The Apple iPad sports an unusually high processor-to-memory channel, an abundance of touch-screen silicon and a novel case design,” according to a report by UBM TechInsights, a sister publication of electrical engineering trade journal eetimes.com.

The report showed that Broadcom and South Korea’s Samsung Group are among the major chip suppliers for the iPad.

“The iPad uses three touch-screen chips instead of the one typically found in an iPhone or iTouch,” said Rick Schafer, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York. “Both Broadcom controllers used in past Apply systems make an appearance here. A Broadcom combo Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip may also be used in the iPad.”

El Segundo-based market tracker iSuppli Corp., in an early forecast, said it expects some 7 million iPads to be sold this year. Sales are expected to double in 2011.

Broadcom’s shares were up more than 3% in early afternoon New York trading on a recent market value of $17 billion.

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