Broadcom exploring mobile TV with Athena purchase

Broadcom today signaled its intentions to expand its wireless silicon business into mobile TV by announcing the purchase of Athena Semiconductors, a fabless radio chipmaker specializing in video, audio and low-power Wi-Fi.

Broadcom is backing up the Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld (DVB-H) standard, the mobile TV spec backed by most of the GSM community. But while its line of multimedia processors support the H.264 compression technology used by DVB-H devices, it has not yet integrated a DVB-H tuner into its chipsets or created a standalone DVB-H radio chip. That’s where Athena’s technology comes in, said Robert Rango, senior vice president and general manager of Broadcom’s wireless group.

“We will create the core of an industry-leading mobile digital TV market,” Rango said in a statement.

Competitor Texas Instruments is already hard at work on its own DVB-H silicon, code-named “Hollywood,” which it plans to release as a separate integrated chipset to complement its OMAP mobile applications processor line. Hollywood begins sampling this quarter, and T-I officials expect it to be shipping in volume by the end of next year, just as carriers start winding down their first DVB-H trials.

Broadcom is also hoping to get mileage out of Athena’s low-power Wi-Fi technology, incorporating it into Broadcom’s current wireless LAN product line. While Wi-Fi and other WLAN technologies are mainly confined to laptops and home networking devices, which aren’t power sensitive, when Wi-Fi makes its way into the handset and other smaller devices, power consumption will be a huge issue, Broadcom officials said. With Athena technology, Broadcom plans to build WLAN integrated chipsets that could work in new dual-mode WiFi/cellular handsets as well as personal electronics connected to the network like digital music players and handheld video games.

Athena is based in Fremont, Calif., and has design teams in Athens, Greece, and Bangalore, India, giving Broadcom a key presence in the subcontinent. Broadcom said it has signed a definitive agreement to buy Athena for $21.6 million in cash and expects to close the deal this quarter.

In other news, TI announced Samsung has agreed to power its first Series 60-powered smartphones with TI OMAP processors.