Broadcom Adds Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi Direct to Android

Broadcom increased its bet on the Android mobile operating system on Tuesday, announcing additional capabilities for its software stack and a new chip for navigation in Android-based devices.

The company added support for Bluetooth 3.0 and for the Wi-Fi Direct specification to its software stacks for Android devices. By using some Wi-Fi technology, Bluetooth 3.0 increases the maximum throughput of the personal-area networking standard to more than 20M bps (bits per second) from roughly 2.1M bps. Wi-Fi Direct allows wireless LAN client devices, such as smartphones and PCs, to communicate directly without going through an access point.

Analysts expect Android, the open-source mobile operating system introduced by Google in 2008, to take a growing share of the mobile device market. IDC said last month it expected Android to be the fastest-growing mobile OS over the next five years, becoming the second-most-popular platform behind Symbian by 2012. The OS is also making its way into other devices, including netbooks and PNDs (personal navigation devices).

Though it declined to talk about specific customers, Broadcom said its communications chips are used in a majority of the Android devices on the market. Its Bluetooth and Wi-Fi transceivers have been reported found in the Google Nexus One handset.

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