Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: A Discussion with Rahul Patel, VP Product Marketing for Wireless Connectivity Combos, Broadcom (Part 1)

Rahul Patel is the vice president of product marketing for wireless connectivity combos at Broadcom, where he has been working since 2002. He has a B. Tech. in electronics & communications engineering from the National Institute of Technology Warangal, an MS in computer science & engineering from Arizona State University, and an MBA in marketing & finance from Santa Clara University. He has more than 20 years of experience in the semiconductor and telecommunications industries. In this interview he talks about the Internet of Things and wearables, how these ideas and products will affect our daily lives, and how Broadcom enables designers and developers to be creative without having technical expertise in networking.

Sramana Mitra: Rahul, let’s start with a bit of background on your part of the Broadcom business. What are you doing, and what are your assumptions?

Rahul Patel: First of all, thank you for inviting me to this discussion. I am part of Broadcom’s Mobile/Wireless group. The company is divided into three large groups: Mobile/Wireless, Broadband/Communications, and ING (Infrastructure and Networking). Within the Mobile/Wireless group, there is the wireless connectivity organization, which is the largest and fastest growing business within Broadcom. I am part of that team, and I manage marketing and outbound customer activities and support, ranging from applications engineering to marketing and business development for wireless connectivity.

The wireless connectivity group focuses largely on four major segments. The first is mobile platforms, where you have phones, tablets, and devices. The second segment is AWE (access and wireless entertainment), which includes infrastructure for the home, gaming devices and consoles, and other gadgets like remote controls, speakers, audio equipment, etc. The third big segment is personal computing, which is largely PC products and tablets. The fourth is what we anticipate to be the largest growing sub-segment in terms of percentage. This is the Internet of Things, where we have variables, appliances, sensors, and automotive. These are the four large segments my group focuses on.

SM: Let’s talk about the Internet of Things. Could you tell us more about how you map this ecosystem? What kinds of use cases are you looking at?

RP: The Internet of Things is a vast application space. I will give you a flavor of applications that we envision. There is a possibility that someday you may have wireless connectivity in your sprinkler system at home to control the watering of your plants. But this extends to everything else you can think of in your home and [could] push the levels of productivity to a newer high. It is a vast segment, but we have divided it into three or four sub-segments. Wearables are very popular in the industry and have gotten a lot of traction in terms of consumer awareness. The second one is appliances. The appliances segment encompasses the equipment in your home – refrigerator, dryer, oven, etc. The third big segment is the sensory segment, which is where I would place all medical devices with wireless connectivity. The fourth segment is vehicles.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: A Discussion with Rahul Patel, VP Product Marketing for Wireless Connectivity Combos, Broadcom
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