Chip maker Broadcom to buy Beceem Communications for $316 million

Broadcom Corp, the maker of semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today agreed to buy wireless platform company Beceem Communications Inc for $316 million in cash in order to accelerate in the low-cost 4-G devices market.

Based in Santa Clara in California and founded in 2003 by Surendra Babu Mandava and Arogyaswami Paulraj, privately held Beceem is a fabless semiconductor maker specialising in the emerging 4G-WiMAX market.

It sells baseband and RF chips as well as complete hardware and software solutions. In 2005, Beceem became the first to market a pre-4G-WiMAX chipset called the MS100, and followed that with the first Wave and Wave 2 mobile 4G-WiMAX chipsets.

It is also the first company to introduce the 4G multi-mode platform that supports both LTE and WiMAX 4G networks.

Its chipsets are used in a variety of wireless products, including computing devices, mobile devices, modules, routers and gateways.

Supporting peak broadband download speeds of up to 200Mbps, its technology enables mobile broadband connectivity for smart phones, mobile computing, consumer electronics products and wireless gateways.