Irvine chipmaker Broadcom Corp. signed a deal to sell its satellite set-top box chips to one of India’s biggest telecommunications and cable providers.
Broadcom is selling chips to Bharti Airtel Ltd., a unit of Bharti Enterprises, which has its headquarters in New Delhi.
“Direct-to-home” digital TV services in India have grown in popularity among the Indian middle class, Broadcom officials said.
India’s burgeoning pay-TV market potential is expected to include 90 million subscribers by 2012, according to data from market researcher In-Stat, a unit of London-based Reed Elsevier Group PLC.
The deal marks Broadcom’s first commercial satellite product launch in India.
Tech Advisers
Laguna Niguel-based chip startup Symwave Inc., which moved to Orange County from San Diego last year, added three veteran tech executives to its advisory board.
Symwave named Kevin Kettler, Brian Chubboy and Gil Frostig to its technical advisory board, a group that helps set Symwave’s long-term strategy.
Kettler is chief technical officer of Dell Inc. Prior to Dell, he worked at IBM Corp. for a dozen years developing PCs.
Chubboy is a senior manager for exclusive brands at Best Buy Co., where he helps with the retailer’s selection of suppliers focusing on flat panel TVs, digital music players, computer accessories networking products, wireless speakers and mobile accessories. Chubboy has done stints at Dell, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Raytheon Co.
Frostig is an Intel Corp. veteran who is vice president of the company’s mobility group and director of low power components for the ultra mobility group.
Symwave has raised $26 million in venture funding to date.
It designs chips for the next generation of universal serial bus ports, or USB, the most popular means of connecting consumer electronics to a PC.
Conexant Adds Workers
A few weeks ago Newport Beach chipmaker Conexant Systems Inc. inked a licensing agreement with Houston-based Analog Devices Inc. to make chips that encode and decode digital audio files on computers.
Conexant is set to make, distribute and support Analog Devices’ product line.
As part of the deal, it also got a handful of engineers and customer support workers from Analog Devices.
The workers are set to be folded into Conexant’s imaging and PC media group in Waltham, Mass., according to spokeswoman Gwen Carlson.
Other terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Earlier this year, Conexant got about 50 workers in Waltham when it bought some of Freescale Semiconductor Inc.’s technologies.
Austin, Texas-based Freescale is the former chip arm of Motorola Inc.
It sold Conexant’s intellectual property for digital picture frames and a line of chips that go into printers that also fax, scan and copy.
Ingram’s New CIO
Ingram Micro Inc., the largest distributor of technology goods, software and consumer electronics, appointed Mario F. Leone chief information officer.
Leone, 52, started the post last week and is set to report to Chief Executive Greg Spierkel.
He replaced Karen Salem, who left the company late last year.
Leone heads Ingram Micro’s information technology organization that supports hundreds of thousands of transactions per day through the company’s operations on five continents.
He most recently was vice president and chief information officer at Southfield, Mich.-based Federal-Mogul Corp., a maker of auto safety gear that sees yearly sales of about $7 billion.
Ingram Micro is the county’s biggest company by sales. It’s expected to see some $35 billion in revenue for 2008.
Vangard’s Venture Funding
Irvine’s Vangard Voice Systems Inc., a maker of speech recognition software, landed $2 million in its second round of venture funding.
Philadelphia-based Berkshire Ventures LLC led the round.
The company is set to spend the money going after new customers and adding additional distributors to its lineup.
Vangard has partnered with a handful of companies that integrate its software into handheld devices such as rugged laptops and other mobile gear.
The company is targeting the government and other customers in the transportation, retail and food services industries.
The startup raised about $3 million in a first round of funding a few years ago. The privately held company has about 10 workers here.
Ride, Sally Ride
Sally Ride, best known as the first American woman to travel in space, joined the board of Irvine-based startup Innovate Technology Inc., a maker of pollution sensors.
Innovate started in 2002 with about $250,000 in seed money and then raised about $3 million in its first venture round.
Innovate’s sensors are used as diagnostic tools for autos and help manufacturers measure emissions from engines, generators and burners.
It also sells them as aftermarket devices for auto and racing enthusiasts.
The startup’s customers include Ford Motor Co., BMW AG and engineering companies that design engines and power train controls for cars.
The company has a dozen workers here and saw $5 million in sales last year.
Ride is currently on leave from her role as a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and is chief executive of Sally Ride Science, an education company she founded in 2001 that aims to make science fun for young students.
Ride became the first American woman to enter outer space when she served as a mission specialist on STS-7 Challenger, which launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in 1983.
