Who says that only the latest and greatest smartphones that costs a kidney and possibly more, can be equipped with fast LTE connectivity? Broadcom recently announced two new chipsets that can deliver advanced 4G (or the Category 4 LTE according to Broadcom) to affordable smartphones – M320 and M340 SoC. Aimed at devices that costs USD$300 or less, these new SoCs can deliver internet speeds of as much as 150Mbps to a phone.
Broadcom is already shipping its dual-core M320 to manufacturers, while the quad-core M340 should be available in the first half of the year. These fifth generation turnkey platform includes support for Android KitKat, Cat4 150Mbps LTE speeds in FDD-LTE and TD-LTE modes and up to 42Mbps with DC-HSPA+ 3G as well as GSM/EDGE, has VoLTE and HD voice support, HD display, imaging and graphics, and fast 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC connectivity.
“We project that the LTE baseband market will register about 64% year-on-year growth in 2014 to reach over 500 million units. Broadcom is one of the only players with a mature carrier-ready multimode LTE SoC, the engineering expertise and the worldwide scale required to deploy LTE platforms. The new Boadcom turnkey design will help accelerate the adoption of LTE worldwide and make high-performance, yet affordable devices available to the broader market.” – Kundojjala, Senior Analyst, Handset Component Technologies service at Strategy Analytics.
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