Broadcom Leads In Networking Chips: Report

LONDON — Broadcom Corp. captured about one fifth and built its overal lead in a networking semiconductor market that grew by 4 percent in 2005, according to The Linley Group.

However, the underlying landscape of competitors and product segments is complex with some technologies becoming outmoded while others are growing in significance, the market analysis company said.

Sales of Ethernet ICs increased about 3 percent while sales of Gigabit Ethernet switching climbed on increased office deployment. The GbE switch and “PHY” chip sales grew about 55 percent and 30 percent in 2005. Broadcom captured about two-thirds of the merchant GbE switch IC market and a similar share of the PHY market, The Linley Group (Mountain View, Calif. ) said.

Broadcom also did well in the DSL chip market in 2005, according to Linley. Overall DSL sales were flat with 2004 but Broadcom grew its revenue 80 percent and overtook Infineon to become the number three supplier. Broadcom’s growth came at the expense of STMicroelectronics as its DSL chip sales fell by 45 percent compared with 2004, the market analyst group said.

Revenues for passive optical networking (PON) chips more than doubled in 2005 to reach $80 million, The Linley Group said. This growth favored Passave which held more than 50 percent of the market. The PON IC market is less than one-tenth the size of the DSL market, according to the researcher’s data. Despite a marked decline in revenue, AMCC maintained number one position in the network processor market, just above Intel, The Linley Group said. Linley ranked AMCC, Intel, Agere and Wintegra as the top four suppliers in an NPU market worth $176 million in 2005.