Quick Pick: Broadcom

In real terms, the need for two chains was most likely one of the reasons Apple's iPhone was initially offered on AT&T's Edge network -- granted, the data speeds are slower than WCDMA or WCDMA/HSDPA, but the user experience, primarily measured in battery charge, was much better.

We've seen this before. Motorola's first color phone, the T720 released in early 2003, had poor battery life characteristics and was a largely forgettable product. But true to form, as the technology matured, improvements and new solutions were found, and now nearly all mobile phones have color screens with adequate battery life.

Perhaps this is the case with Broadcom's BCM21551 "3G phone on a chip" solution, which it claims can let mobile phone manufacturers "build next-generation 3G HSUPA phones with breakthrough features, sleek form factors and very long battery life."

If this truly is the case, it would be a part that Apple iPhone consumers are screaming for, at least according to those who are not happy with AT&T Edge network and either have issues using the iPhone's Wi-Fi capability to access data or simply don't want to pay an incremental data subscription for Wi-Fi access on top of iPhone data access charges.

Aside from those incremental costs upsetting its customers, AT&T should also be interested in this new chip, because it could offer robust 3G mobile phones with quick data speeds and good battery life; it could also compete against competing network data speeds. AT&T should be looking to back solutions that bring robust battery life to devices that can run on its high-speed data network in order to effectively compete against Verizon and Sprint .

I believe it would be a coup for Apple to be early to market with such a robust device -- high data speeds, touch interface and the iPhone's killer ease of use -- but it would make a logical next step in the product evolution for the iPhone. If Broadcom is able to win that slot with Apple, its shares would stand to benefit much the way other suppliers have, such as Portal Player and Synaptics have with iPods and the way Skyworks and RF Micro Devices stand to gain with the iPhone.

The only catch is that Broadcom, like the others, can't really talk about it given Apple's sticky supplier confidentiality agreements; I guess we'll have to wait for the eventual teardown analysis for confirmation.