Study: Broadcom to dominate connectivity IC market in 2013

This includes stand-alone Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC, and ZigBee, as well as connectivity IC chipsets and platform solutions. "Increased diversification and building out product portfolios to include many wireless connectivity technologies is crucial to vendors' current and future success," commented Peter Cooney, wireless connectivity practice director.

The leading supplier, Broadcom, will continue to dominate, benefiting largely from the fast growing connectivity IC chipset market. Qualcomm will also see growth due to continued uptake of its Snapdragon platform in the smartphone market. "Both Broadcom and Qualcomm recently announced new NFC products which will be an essential addition as this technology sees market acceptance over the next 5 years," Cooney adds.

Stand-alone wireless connectivity ICs will continue to be very important as newer technologies such as Bluetooth Smart, WiGig, and NFC penetrate high volume applications and are increasingly adopted in developing markets such as sports and fitness, automotive and retail.

Connectivity chipsets will continue to see strong shipment and revenue growth particularly in high volume consumer markets such as laptops, tablets, and TVs. Platform solutions will see the strongest growth as these enable OEMs to achieve even faster time to market in very competitive areas such as low-end smartphones.

ABI projects cumulative shipments of Bluetooth-enabled devices to exceed 10 billion next year while Wi-Fi-enabled devices are expected to surpass the same volume in 2015.