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Open Handset Alliance Profile: Broadcom

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Open Handset Alliance Member Profiles (Week #4 – Broadcom )
For 34 weeks, each Tuesday, Jordan from fandroid.net will be joining us to offer a profile of each of the 34 members of the Open Handset Alliance.

Company Name: Broadcom Corporation

How the OHA site classifies them: Semiconductor Company

What the OHA site says about them: Broadcom Corporation is a major technology innovator and global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, providing products that enable the delivery of voice, video, data and multimedia to and throughout the home, the office and the mobile environment.

What they do: They build chips.

Wikipedia proclaims them “…among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders.” Their site list their offerings as including Bluetooth products, network processing solutions, digital cable products, digital TV solutions, satellite devices, DSL chipsets, mobile multimedia processors, mobile phone solutions, networking components, security processors, I/O integrated circuits, storage solutions, VOIP solutions, WLAN solutions, and Ethernet solutions. They got solutions.

Broadcom is probably best known for their NICs. There’s a good chance that the network card in the PC you’re currently reading this article on was designed by Broadcom.

Of course, Broadcom doesn’t really build any of this. Rather, it employs Asian people to do the building for them.

Special Feature: What is up with the Broadcom vs. Qualcomm conflict?
It’s complicated, and probably less exciting than you’d think. Basically, these two seem to get off on suing each other, and have been doing so for a few years now.

The most recent and most interesting contest started back in May of 2005, when Broadcom went after Qualcomm with a lawsuit over 10 supposed patent infringements, as well as a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging unfair trade practices by importing products that infringe Broadcom patents. Then, in July of the same year Broadcom launched a couple more lawsuits accusing Qualcomm of violating antitrust laws.

Then a bunch of legal stuff happened.

The ITC eventually blocked the import of new cellphone models based on infringing Qualcomm chips, a jury awarded Broadcom $19.6 billion dollars, and, most recently, a federal judge has ordered Qualcomm to stop selling the contested chips.

So, like, ouch for Qualcomm.

I’m no legal reporter. This stuff makes my molars ache. Basically, these two hate each other. It makes Thanksgiving at the OHA household a tense affair. Let’s leave it at that.
What they bring to OHA and Android: Semiconductors. And, given their history with Qualcomm, domestic violence.

Broadcom kinda has its fingers in everything, including LiMo, a partnership with Trolltech, and now Android. Whether this means they’ll have a meaningful contribution to make in the Linux handset space or that they’re just lurking to keep options open for the future remains to be seen.

Open Handset Alliance Profile: Audience

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Open Handset Alliance Member Profiles (Week #3 – Audience )
For 34 weeks, each Tuesday, Jordan from fandroid.net will be joining us to offer a profile of each of the 34 members of the Open Handset Alliance.

Company Name: Audience.

How the OHA site classifies them: Semiconductor Company

What the OHA site says about them: Audience is a voice processor company that enables clear communications anywhere with noise suppression technology based on the intelligence of the human hearing system.

What they do: Apparently something that’s cool as hell. Check out that bit from the OHA site “Noise suppression technology based on the intelligence of the human hearing system.”

The Audience site isn’t open yet. Just a big “Starting in 2008, Be Heard”, the option to register for info (which I have, I’ll let you know if I receive anything), and some cool quotes, including one from Ray Kurzweil talking about “neuromorphic princples”. Neuromorphic, according to Wikipedia, describes “… Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) systems containing electronic analog circuits that mimic neuro-biological architectures present in the nervous system.” VLSI “…is the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistor-based circuits into a single chip.” And they’re using these technologies to improve the audio quality of mobile calls.

Now that’s badass.

Audience CEO Peter Santos’ supporting quote attached to the OHA press release:
“We are pleased to be a part of the Open Handset Alliance as it embarks on revolutionizing the world of mobile communications. As open devices enter the market in 2008, Audience is defining the new standard for noise suppression, enabling more usability of rich voice and data applications on this platform. Callers will be able to be heard everywhere from their mobile handset, even in the noisiest places.”

What they bring to OHA and Android: Positronic brains.

I had a hard time finding anything specific about these guys, but the technology memes they’re slinging around got my Sci-Fi geekboy bits all a-tingle. They’re mimicking biological systems in a chip, here. Not just functionally, but architecturally.

Obviously, whether or not this is going to result in anything of note is up for debate. The propaganda sounds cool, but whether all these buzz-words are going to equal honest-to-goodness paradigm-shifting tech is up for debate.

I have hope, just ’cause I’m optimistic like that, that these guys are gonna put some real-life android-y goodness into the OHA’s offerings.

Open Handset Alliance Profile: Ascender

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Open Handset Alliance Member Profiles (Week #2 – Ascender )
For 34 weeks, each Tuesday, Jordan from fandroid.net will be joining us to offer a profile of each of the 34 members of the Open Handset Alliance.

Company Name: Ascender Corp.

How the OHA site classifies them: Software Company

What the OHA site says about them: Ascender Corp. is a leading provider of advanced font products and innovative applications for mobile devices.

What they do: Fonts. Big fonts, little fonts, fat fonts, thin fonts. Chinese fonts and Hebrew fonts. Fonts from A-B. In fact, they run a

Font Store, which is precisely as breathtaking and overwhelming as you’d expect it to be.

Oh, and they produce the Personality Kit , which is a system for customizing your Windows Mobile phone with themes, ringtones, and … fonts.

What you may not realize is that Ascender, of whom you may never have before heard, is actually a font superpower. Ever come across Arial or Times New Roman? Comic Sans? Tahoma? Trebuchet? All Ascender’s—sorta; that is: the company’s two founders, Steve Matteson and and Tom Rickner, worked with Microsoft and Apple developing these foundational fonts, which makes ’em like the Tim Berners-Lee and, er, Steve Wozniak of… fonts. I guess.

These guys have a contract to distribute Microsoft fonts and have worked with IBM on Japanese fonts. Steve Matteson designed the fonts for the Xbox 360. And, check out this bit from their Wikipedia article:

Ascender has conducted numerous typographic-related research projects including a study on the typefaces that appear on the front pages of America’s top daily newspapers. This study identified the most popular typefaces, sources, and the pervasive use of custom fonts in newspaper design.

What they bring to OHA and Android: Umm, fonts. Specifically, the Droid font collection.

In all seriousness, designing fonts that are readable and appealing on a two-and-a-half inch screen is no job for amateurs. These guys are probably the best in the world at what they do, so Android is in good hands.

Ascender Corp. Site

Open Handset Alliance Profile: Aplix

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Open Handset Alliance Member Profiles (Week #1 – Aplix)
For 34 weeks, each Tuesday, Jordan from fandroid.net will be joining us to offer a profile of each of the 34 members of the Open Handset Alliance.

Company Name: Aplix Corporation

How the OHA site classifies them: Commercialization Company

What the OHA site says about them: Aplix Corporation enables mobile handset manufacturers to have a faster, lower development cost and lower risk route to deploy wireless Java solutions.

What they do: Aplix develops embedded software for mobile phones and PCs. They are a world leader in deploying Java technology on mobile handsets. They are probably best known for Jblend, which the Aplix site describes as “…an embedded software product that enables Java technology on resource constrained devices such as mobile phones.” Jblend has been shipped on almost 360 million handsets. Most of Jblend’s deployment has been in Asian markets; it is deployed on devices by Samsung, Panasonic, Hitachi, Motorola, Sanyo, Sharp, and Toshiba.

They also offer Mobile PictDirect, middleware for printing photos directly from a mobile handset which complies with industry standard PictBridge.

Aplix has been in a strategic alliance with (and is an investor in) MontaVista Software for a little over a year now, with the goal of better integrating MontaVista’s Mobilinux OS with Aplix’s middleware. The company is a member of LiMo.

What they bring to OHA and Android: Mobile mojo, I guess.
Honestly, It’s a little difficult to see Aplix’s role here, basically because I can’t see what they offer that Google needs. Jblend is nice and all, but Android basically cherry-picks the Java syntax for Android while discarding Java ME. Aplix is a true-to-the-cause Java lover, and Google has gone off the holy path.

Forgive my cynicism, but the PictDirect thing is silly.

The MontaVista connection may have been a factor; Aplix has genuine experience mating Java with Linux on mobile devices. But, again, I have to wonder how much that experience means when the traditional Java runtime has been discarded. MontaVista is not to be seen in the OHA roster… yet. When asked if he would join, MontaVista’s CEO Thomas Kelly replied “Absolutely. We consider the OHA to be very compatible to everything we’re doing.” I’m guessing, however, that Google hasn’t yet sent out the invitation.

It may have been Aplix’s general mobilespace facility may have been attractive to OHA’s overlords. They have the Java experience, the Linux experience, and the mobile software business experience; they’d be nice to have at the table in a consultant capacity.

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