Irvine communications chipmaker Broadcom Corp. made a flurry of new product announcements at its annual analyst conference last month.
Most notable was the company’s plans to make chips for Android-based smartphones, giving it another leg to stand on in the hypercompetitive cell phone market.
The chips cost less than competitors’ and would allow cell phone makers to manufacture a smartphone for as little as $100, according to Ross Seymore, an analyst at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in San Francisco.
Most impressive, according to analyst Craig Berger of Virginia’s FBR Capital Markets Corp., is the company’s growing cache of intellectual property.
Broadcom added to its IP stable with six acquisitions in 2010, four of them in the fourth quarter alone.
“The firm is amassing the largest collection of chip IP under one roof,” Berger said in a research note. “This substantial IP portfolio should allow Broadcom to stitch together chips in combinations that other competitors cannot provide as well as develop scale, IP reuse and cross-selling benefits galore.”
In other Broadcom news, the company was lauded by the Global Semiconductor Alliance, a San Jose-based trade group.
Broadcom was named the “most respected public semiconductor company with $500 million to $10 billion in annual sales.”
Broadcom was evaluated by judges based on its products, vision and future opportunities, the group said.
Other chipmakers that landed awards were Northern California’s Intel Corp., NetLogic Microsystems Inc. and Altera Corp., and others.
The 2010 awards were presented at the group’s annual awards dinner held about a month ago in Santa Clara.
Broadcom is the area’s biggest chipmaker by sales and number of local workers. Its chips go into a variety of devices—including Nintendo Co.’s Wii, Apple Inc.’s iPad and a number of cell phones.
The company had a recent market value of $22 billion, with its shares trading at $44.
Analyst Likes Ingram
Ingram Micro Inc., the Santa Ana-based distributor of technology products for corporations and consumers, enters 2011 with a bullish outlook behind its shares.
“Ingram Micro is seeing healthy growth in all regions with strong demand in the small- and medium-sized business and enterprise space,” said Brian Alexander, managing director of equity research at Raymond James & Associates, part of Raymond James Financial Inc. in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Ingram sees 2011 information technology spending targets coming in at 5% to 10% over 2010, Alexander said in a research note.
Europe, in particular, should be a bright spot for Ingram.
“The company’s higher margin IM Logistics division signed eight new mid-size customers in Europe and we expect this business to expand globally in the next few years,” Alexander said.
The fourth quarter typically is a good one for technology companies, because corporations rush to spend what’s left of their tech budgets before the year’s end.
A survey of tech distributors by Raymond James found that most “were fairly upbeat about IT spending thus far in the fourth quarter,” Alexander said.
“Virtually all participating executives were confident that IT spending should be up in the mid-single digits in 2011, despite difficult comparisons, sovereign debt concerns, high unemployment and moderating corporate profits,” he said.
Alexander has an “outperform” rating on Ingram Micro’s stock and a price target of $22 per share.
Ingram closed the year trading at about $19 per share on a market value of roughly $3 billion.
HID Global Adds to Fold
Irvine-based HID Global Corp., a maker of security cards and readers, acquired Northern California’s ActiveIdentity Corp. for about $162 million.
HID Global is part of lock maker Assa Abloy AB, which is publicly traded in Sweden.
ActiveIdentity, which has its headquarters in Fremont, is set to be folded into HID Global’s operations.
ActiveIdentity makes what’s called “logical” access technologies, which allow workers to log on to secure networks and computers and verifies their identities.
HID Global, which was acquired by Assa Abloy in 2000 for $250 million, makes identification cards and badges as well as readers, including devices used to unlock doors.
HID cards typically hold a chip and an antenna laminated in plastic. The company also makes access cards for computers, security inlays that go into passports and ID cards, livestock tags and radio frequency identification tags.
Local customers include Broadcom and Aliso Viejo’s Quest Software Inc. Other biggies are Cisco Systems Inc., Panasonic Corp. and FedEx Corp., among other Fortune 500 companies.
HID Global started in 1991 as Hughes Identification Devices, part of Hughes Aircraft Co.
In 1995, the company became part of Carlsbad-based Palomar Technological Cos. in a management buyout backed by Citicorp Venture Capital.
HID holds about half the market for access control technology products globally, according to industry sources.
The company has some 180 workers split between two offices Irvine.
