This week’s Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona showcases the latest and greatest in all kinds of mobile gadgets. Among the sleek new smartphones and tablets, the HTC One® was a standout: it nabbed “best in show” awards from a handful of publications and trade groups.

GSMA, the trade organization that puts on the annual Mobile World Congress, picked the One as the “Best New Mobile Handset, Device or Tablet” in its 18th annual Global Mobile Awards. HTC was in good company with other big-name winners, including Samsung, Nokia, Asus and more.

The HTC One also receiving recognition from TechRadar, a U.K.-based consumer technology website, which picked the phone as “Best in Show” and “Best Phone” for its inaugural MWC Awards, and Mobile Geeks named it the “Best Smartphone” [VIDEO]. It was also included in a roundup of “best of show” favorites by tech blog Engadget.

The One, a new smartphone unveiled by HTC at the show that boasts Broadcom’s 5G WiFi connectivity among other cool features.

Gareth Beavis, phones and tablets editor at TechRadar, said about the One’s wins:

“HTC’s combination of stunning design, alternative camera technology and cutting edge specs have created a real buzz around its impending launch.”

The HTC One, with Broadcom’s 5G WiFi connectivity inside, meets data-hungry consumers’ insatiable demand for video, music, photos and data of all types on mobile phones. It offers speedy and reliable connectivity, while also meeting an important expectation of the mobile experience: longer battery life.

Kouji Kodera, Chief Product Officer for HTC said customers “expect a seamless streaming experience” and credited Broadcom’s 5G WiFi with delivering “higher bandwidth and broader range.”

The excitement around the HTC One’s launch was a palpable at the show, making the sleek device a standout, according to TechRadar’s Beavis.

“You only needed to look at the swaths of people clustered around the HTC stand to play with the One to see that this is where the buzz resides at the show this year,” he said.

Related:

• Engadget: Mobile World Congress 2013: Best of Show
  
• TechRadar: HTC One beats Xperia Tablet Z to Best in Show at MWC 2013
• Android Authority: HTC One Named Best in Show at MWC, Sony Xperia Tablet Z Wins Best Slate
• From Mobile World Congress: 5G WiFi Ecosystem Grows with Arrival of HTC One® Smartphone
• HTC One Mobile Provided with 5G Wi-Fi Chipset: HTC One Mobile Features

The StrataXGS® Trident II series is one of Electronic Products magazine’s 2012 Products of the Year.

It’s not every day that Broadcom’s hardworking engineers get recognized for their innovations, especially when their work deals in the particulars of managing the complex back-end of cloud networks. This week, the team that designed the StrataXGS® Trident II was lauded after the switch series was named one of the 2012 Products of the Year by Electronic Products magazine.

The award is an important triumph in the team’s collective careers, said Jim Harrison, the magazine’s West Coast editor, “as well as a milestone for Broadcom,” during a presentation at Broadcom’s San Jose campus this week. The StrataXGS® Trident II series was released last summer and addresses critical issues of cloud-scale networking.

The magazine chooses 17 winning products for the annual awards from among the thousands that hit the market each year. The winners represent significant advancement and innovative design in their respective categories, according to the magazine.

The members of the StrataXGS® Trident II design team on hand to receive the award were Avinash Mani, Mohammad Issa, Nick Kucharewski, Hsin-Yuan Ho, Venkatesh Buduma and Mike Jorda. The team has worked together for about 12 years, said Kucharewski, a Senior Director of Product Marketing in the Infrastructure and Networking Group.

Members of Broadcom’s StrataXGS® Trident II design team were on hand to receive the award, from left: Avinash Mani, Mohammad Issa, Nick Kucharewski, Hsin-Yuan Ho, Venkatesh Buduma and Mike Jorda.

Related:

• [Press Release]: Broadcom StrataXGS Trident II Awarded Product of the Year
• The Flexible Cloud: Smart-Table Technology Enables Network Scalability
• Broadcom’s 28nm Technology: Greater performance and less power consumption is only the beginning
• Virtualization Meets the Cloud at VMworld
• Broadcom Tackles Cloud Control at VMworld

When it comes to home networking technologies, Broadcom is an industry leader that is “well-positioned to lead” the hybrid wired-wireless networking space, according to an analyst report issued today by ABI Research.

An illustration showing the MoCA Alliance’s vision of the connected home.

In the report, Broadcom was named first among the top five chipmakers for innovation and implementation of home networking technologies. That conclusion was based on a competitive analysis by ABI that looked at the top home networking standards, such as HomePlug, MoCA, Wi-Fi and others.

Read ABI’s full press release here.

The companies were ranked on a matrix that measured innovation and implementation of technologies in 2011 and 2012, as well as market share data by total nodes shipped in 2011, the most recent full-year data available.

Broadcom emerged as a leader in the vendor matrix analysis with a score of 67.7, the report showed.

“Broadcom finished first overall and in both the innovation and implementation categories. Broadcom has the widest presence in the wired (MoCA and HomePlug) and wireless networking markets and is well positioned to lead the hybrid networking space.”

While Broadcom ranked second in the market share for 2011 node shipments, ABI is bullish on the company’s ability to gain traction in the future. From the report:

“Broadcom is on a good trajectory to capture the top position, particularly as the market matures. Broadcom’s top position in the Wi-Fi market (discrete and combo solutions) also affords the company an advantage as hybrid networking increasingly becomes more commonplace.”

Related:

• DLNA’s CES Mission: Premium Content on Any Device in Your Home
  
• IT World: Six Home Networking Technologies to Watch Out For
• Broadcom’s Michael Hurlston on CES Panel: “Six Wireless Technologies You’ll Want to Know”
• Connected Home Technologies: See the Enhanced In-Home Experience at CES
• IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine: Broadcom’s Stephen Palm on the future of the connected home

Call it TV with a new twist.

When Blu-Ray players hit the scene a few years ago, they not only introduced viewers to a new vibrant, high-definition picture quality but also a lineup of new capabilities such as the ability to download a favorite movie or listen to an online radio station created on a laptop.

Today, the technology has spread its wings, going beyond Blu-Ray players and moving into many of the set-top boxes that consumers already have connected to their TVs. As such, viewers are quickly becoming accustomed to the instant delivery of some of these Internet-powered services.

Read Rovi’s press release about the certification here. 

Broadcom, of course, has been instrumental in powering some of these technological breakthroughs. Today, we’re happy to announce that our IP set-top box platforms has achieved the DivX Plus Streaming Certification, a milestone that solidifies our platform for the DivX Plus Streaming technology. That technology provides instant, easy access to enhanced streaming content on the go, making movie watching better with 1080p high def picture, multilingual subtitles, smooth fast-forward and rewind, instant playback across devices and the ability to download and playback when offline. For service providers, DivX Plus Streaming is a differentiated feature that can be offered to customers.

Broadcom powers this high-performance viewing experience with its easy-to-implement certified DivX Plus Streaming BCM7241 IP set-top box platform.

The certification and associated technology are being touted this week at IBC 2012 in Amsterdam, an important industry gathering for European cable, IPTV and satellite markets. In fact, the streaming service is ripe for expansion in Europe, where it is offered by electronics retail giant Media Markt.

Watch the video to learn more about Rovi’s DivX Plus Streaming offering:

Related:

• IPTV Revolution in Your Living Room: Broadcom at IBC Amsterdam
• Broadcom’s Full-Band Capture: Digital Tuning That Enables Much More Bandwidth With Much Less Energy
• TV to Any Screen: DIRECTV’s Media Center is Named Innovation Finalist
• In Television, the Future is Now

Broadcom’s Eben Upton and his so-simple-it’s-revolutionary Raspberry Pi have been recognized in this year’s class of “35 Innovators Under 35” by MIT’s Technology Review, which seeks young innovators whose “work is likely to be influential for a very long time.”

Upton, Technical Director in the Mobile and Wireless Group at Broadcom’s Cambridge, UK, office, helped create the Raspberry Pi, a $25 computer that’s ripe for tinkering.

Read Broadcom’s news release.

The aim of the affordable device is to inspire young people to explore computer science and boost teaching basic programming in schools, according to Technology Review’s profile:

“Being a hardware guy at heart, Upton went ahead and built a prototype of a next-generation hobbyist machine — the sort of stripped-down device that would enable its users to become acquainted with the guts of a computer. It would also allow its users to put the machine to work in projects ranging from robotics to wearable computing to gaming.”

Raspberry Pi

This year’s “35 Innovators Under 35” honorees include the founders of Pinterest and Spotify, as well as young pioneers in hardware, electronics, nanotechnology and other tech fields.

They will be honored at the EmTech MIT 2012 conference in October at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge.Congratulations to Eben and the entire Raspberry Pi Foundation!

Related:

• Attention Raspberry Pi-oneers! Broadcom Helps Spread the Raspberry Jam
• TR35 2012
• How to Summon Your Child’s Inner Coder: 10 Questions With Raspberry Pi Inventor Eben Upton
• Raspberry Pi to get Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

An interview with Broadcom CEO Scott McGregor hit the airwaves July 25 on the heels of the company’s Q2 earnings. McGregor appeared on CNBC’s investment show “Mad Money” to talk about the company’s latest successes. Host Jim Cramer enthusiastically conducted the interview, musing throughout the segment: “What makes Broadcom different?”

Some highlights:

• McGregor pointed to Broadcom’s stronghold in the growing smartphone arena: “Our connectivity products are in most of the smartphones that you can buy. And, so that breadth in that market really gives us an opportunity.”

• They discussed Broadcom’s technology in TV set-top boxes, with a nod to the opportunities in emerging markets. McGregor also spoke to how broadband is seeing growing demand – HDTV content that is accessible anywhere in the home:  “In the living room, people want to get HD content. They want to get content in all their rooms. That’s really driving a lot of growth here in the United States as well. “

• McGregor explained why Broadcom has an edge in the market, referencing the “breadth of IP” at the company and pointed to how its products combine technologies into single, integrated chips that simplify complex tasks and lower costs for customers.

• Cramer specifically asked for more details about Broadcom’s 5G WiFi technology. “It’s a no-brainer,” McGregor said. “It’s twice the performance, twice the gigabit performance, twice the range. It’s lower power, which means your cell phone battery is going to last longer. And we’re going to deliver that in phones starting at the end of this year.”

Watch the clip here: CNBC Mad Money’s Broadcom CEO Interview

Related:

• Pay TV Goes Global: Broadcom Takes on Brazil
• Tiny Combo Chips Pack a Big Punch with 5G WiFi for Mobile Devices
• 5G WiFi: Pioneering the New Generation of Wireless Connectivity