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Broadcom's Highly Integrated Bluetooth Platform Provides Superior Features and Accelerates Time-to-Market for Leading Device Manufacturers
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Computex 2007, June 4, 2007 -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today announced that GG Telecom, an international supplier of Bluetooth® headsets, adapters and peripherals, will build next- generation wireless mono headsets featuring Broadcom® Bluetooth audio solutions. Introduced in January 2007, Broadcom's advanced Bluetooth platform enables OEMs to cost effectively develop complete lines of headsets, headphones and other audio streaming devices with sleek designs, longer battery life and a superior audio experience. GG Telecom will leverage Broadcom's technical superiority and proven Bluetooth silicon and software to differentiate its headsets with significantly better sound quality, power efficiency and cost effectiveness. The new headsets will be demonstrated this week at Computex 2007.
Audio devices represent the second largest Bluetooth segment (after mobile handsets). Analysts predict that 80 million Bluetooth headsets will ship in 2007, and their popularity will continue to increase as more countries, states and cities enact hands-free legislation. Audio quality, sleek form factors and battery life are important to the adoption of headsets. Broadcom's leading- edge Bluetooth technology enables OEMs to quickly deliver the features that consumers demand.
"The market for Bluetooth headsets is increasingly competitive, with more users and greater expectations for sound quality, design and features," said K.F. Tsou, Executive Vice President of GG Telecom. "By leveraging Broadcom's superior audio solutions, we can not only deliver the high-quality headsets that consumers demand, but also protect our bottom line with cost effective designs and faster development cycles."
GG Telecom is designing a full line of next generation headsets based on Broadcom's BCM2044 and 2047 products. The new solutions leverage Broadcom's proven Bluetooth silicon and software products, while adding innovative audio enhancements to significantly improve the performance and user experience of wireless headsets. All solutions in the audio family support Bluetooth Version 2.0 (upgradeable to Bluetooth Version 2.1) with enhanced data rate (EDR) capability, which triples the connection speeds to enable advanced multimedia applications. The products also maintain low-power operation, an integrated battery charger and full featured power management unit to enable headsets to achieve more than 10 hours of talk time.
"Our new Bluetooth audio platform brings unprecedented performance and flexibility to headset designs, enabling our customers to overcome the technical and cost hurdles of previous solutions," said Scott Bibaud, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Wireless Personal Area Networking line of business. "As an innovator in the Bluetooth market, GG Telecom recognizes the value of this new audio platform and will soon deliver a family of headsets with market-leading features and functionality."
Broadcom's innovative audio platform includes the following solutions:
* BCM2047 -- Provides the best sound quality available for premium
wireless headsets, thanks to the industry's most powerful and
programmable multi-core Bluetooth architecture and an integrated
digital signal processor (DSP).
* BCM2044 -- Ideally suited for basic audio headsets, this ROM-based
device features the same low-power Bluetooth radio and high quality
audio features as the BCM2047 at a significantly lower bill of
materials (BOM) cost.
* Smart Audio technology -- A proprietary sound and voice enhancement
technology that significantly improves audio quality in noisy
environments, by reducing background noise by 95 percent, and
minimizing unwanted acoustic echo.
Broadcom's Bluetooth Product Family
Having shipped hundreds of millions of Bluetooth products, Broadcom offers the most complete family of Bluetooth silicon and software solutions for mobile phones, PCs, wireless headphones and headsets, peripherals, gaming and other applications. Broadcom's Bluetooth solutions are widely recognized in the industry as the most widely deployed and feature rich solutions. The world's largest manufacturers of consumer electronics, mobile phones and personal computer products rely on Broadcom Bluetooth technology to provide their customers with a unique, intuitive and rich user experience increasingly free of wires and cables.
About Broadcom
Broadcom Corporation is a major technology innovator and global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications. Broadcom products enable the delivery of voice, video, data and multimedia to and throughout the home, the office and the mobile environment. We provide the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art, system-on-a-chip and software solutions to manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, digital entertainment and broadband access products, and mobile devices. These solutions support our core mission: Connecting everything®.
Broadcom is one of the world's largest fabless semiconductor companies, with 2006 revenue of $3.67 billion, and holds over 2,000 U.S. and 800 foreign patents, more than 6,000 additional pending patent applications, and one of the broadest intellectual property portfolios addressing both wired and wireless transmission of voice, video and data.
Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. Broadcom may be contacted at +1.949.926.5000 or at http://www.broadcom.com.
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:
All statements included or incorporated by reference in this release, other than statements or characterizations of historical fact, are forward- looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry and business, management's beliefs, and certain assumptions made by us, all of which are subject to change. Forward-looking statements can often be identified by words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "predicts," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," "may," "will," "should," "would," "could," "potential," "continue," "ongoing," similar expressions, and variations or negatives of these words. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause our actual results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statement.
Important factors that may cause such a difference for Broadcom in connection with Bluetooth products include, but are not limited to, general economic and political conditions and specific conditions in the markets we address, including the volatility in the technology sector and semiconductor industry, trends in the broadband communications markets in various geographic regions, including seasonality in sales of consumer products into which our products are incorporated, and possible disruption in commercial activities related to terrorist activity or armed conflict in the United States and other locations; the rate at which our present and future customers and end-users adopt Broadcom's technologies and products in the markets for wireless networking applications; delays in the adoption and acceptance of industry standards in those markets; the timing, rescheduling or cancellation of significant customer orders and our ability, as well as the ability of our customers, to manage inventory; the gain or loss of a key customer, design win or order; our ability to scale our operations in response to changes in demand for our existing products and services or demand for new products requested by our customers; our ability to specify, develop or acquire, complete, introduce, market and transition to volume production new products and technologies in a cost-effective and timely manner; intellectual property disputes and customer indemnification claims and other types of litigation risk; the quality of our products and any remediation costs; our ability to timely and accurately predict market requirements and evolving industry standards and to identify opportunities in new markets; problems or delays that we may face in shifting our products to smaller geometry process technologies and in achieving higher levels of design integration; our ability to retain, recruit and hire key executives, technical personnel and other employees in the positions and numbers, with the experience and capabilities, and at the compensation levels needed to implement our business and product plans; the risks and uncertainties associated with our international operations; competitive pressures and other factors such as the qualification, availability and pricing of competing products and technologies and the resulting effects on sales and pricing of our products; the timing of customer-industry qualification and certification of our products and the risks of non-qualification or non-certification; changes in our product or customer mix; the volume of our product sales and pricing concessions on volume sales; the availability and pricing of third party semiconductor foundry, assembly and test capacity and raw materials; fluctuations in the manufacturing yields of our third party semiconductor foundries and other problems or delays in the fabrication, assembly, testing or delivery of our products; the risks of producing products with new suppliers and at new fabrication and assembly facilities; the effectiveness of our expense and product cost control and reduction efforts; the effects of natural disasters, public health emergencies, international conflicts and other events beyond our control; the level of orders received that can be shipped in a fiscal quarter; and other factors.
Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, recent Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss the foregoing risks as well as other important risk factors that could contribute to such differences or otherwise affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. The forward-looking statements in this release speak only as of this date. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason.
Broadcom®, the pulse logo, Connecting everything®, the Connecting everything logo and SmartAudio™ are among the trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU. ARM® and AudioDE™ are trademarks of ARM Limited. Bluetooth is a trademark of Bluetooth SIG, Inc. Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
Broadcom Trade Press Contact
Henry Rael
Public Relations Manager
949-926-5734
hrael@broadcom.com
Broadcom Investor Relations Contact
T. Peter Andrew
Vice President, Corporate Communications
949-926-5663
andrewtp@broadcom.com
Broadcom Technical Contacts
Seow Lim
Director of Marketing, Bluetooth
408-501-8440
seowl@broadcom.com
SOURCE Broadcom Corporation; BRCM Mobile & Wireless
Trade Press, Henry Rael, Public Relations Manager, +1-949-926-5734, hrael@broadcom.com, Investor Relations, T. Peter Andrew, Vice President, Corporate Communications, +1-949-926-5663, andrewtp@broadcom.com, or Technical Contact, Seow Lim, Director of Marketing, Bluetooth, +1-408-501-8440, seowl@broadcom.com, all of Broadcom Corporation
