Those aren’t the only players, though. Samsung and Huawei make some of their own chips, while Intel is also going after this market. Quietly making inroads as well is Broadcom.

The Orange County, Calif., chipmaker has long made Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and other communications chips for phones. In recent months, though, it has been able to capture a sizeable chunk of the main processor market, thanks to its chip, which combines an application processor with another key component, the communications baseband.

“Smartphones have become a significant business for Broadcom,” Broadcom CEO Scott McGregor told AllThingsD in an interview last week.

McGregor declined to get specific, but a recent J.P. Morgan report estimated that Broadcom’s baseband and application processor is now in roughly a third of Samsung’s smartphones, which it says represents three to four times what the company was doing as recently as the second half of this year.

Among the models using Broadcom’s chips are the Galaxy Y, Galaxy Mini and Galaxy Ace, J.P. Morgan said, projecting sales of about 12 million to 13 million phones per quarter, which it says could translate into $500 million in annual revenue.

Broadcom, it notes, also has about 70 percent share with most of the major smartphone and tablet makers for the chips needed to do Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. The new iPad, for example, uses Broadcom’s chips, according to an IHS iSuppli teardown of the tablet.

“Over the next few years, Broadcom should emerge as one of the top players in the mobile/cellular semiconductor market,” J.P. Morgan’s analysts said in their report.

Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair said he left last month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona even more positive than he had been on Broadcom’s prospects.

“We have said that we believe that the biggest trend of the decade is the low-end smartphone,” Blair said in a research note. “One of the most surprising elements of this trend is how good the entry level models have become, and one of the reasons for this is Broadcom.”

Blair said that even phones that sell for $150 unsubsidized are now capable of doing what a high-end smartphone did just two years ago. The phones powered typically have a 1GHz processor and baseband and other communications and power management chips, all of which can add up to devices with $20 to $22 worth of Broadcom silicon, assuming it has all of its chips inside.

Historically, the chipmaker has mainly gone after the midrange of the market, but McGregor promised that the company will move into higher-end devices this year, as well as a bit down-market.

“We’ll cover the whole waterfront,” McGregor said. He acknowledged that the company had some catching up to do in application processors and high-end modems, such as those used in 4G phones.

Android has grown considerably, he said, though he still sees some room for other operating systems, particularly now the Microsoft has managed to get several phone makers to pay a royalty on every Android device they sell.

“One of the challenges of Android is that Microsoft is now hitting up all of the handset makers and claiming a corkage free on that dinner,” McGregor said. “I think that’s an interesting challenge for the handset industry.”

The acquisition, which will more than double Broadcom’s addressable market in network infrastructure and extend its reach in the 4G chip space, is the company’s 47th since its founding in 1991. It’s also the fourth-largest acquisition of a U.S. chipmaker in the past five years.

“The premium is fair,” said Broadcom CEO Scott McGregor. “This acquisition expands our market into additional networking opportunities.”

Just at this week’s Mobile World Congress alone, the company announced plans for a whole range of new chips, including a processor that the company said should help Google in its goal of driving Android down into lower price points.

“The chips we’ve announced allow for Android phones to cover the gamut,” McGregor told Mobilized. While rivals such as Nvidia and Qualcomm plan ever more powerful chips for the high end of the phone and tablet markets, Broadcom is looking to crack into the Android processor market by driving down cost.

The key, he said, is that its processors, while perhaps not yet competitive at the ultra-high end of the smartphone market, integrate more functions than do rival chips. More stuff on a single chip means lower prices, and with Broadcom’s latest chip, Android devices should be able to stretch all the way down to the middle of the feature phone market.

Touring the company’s booth, McGregor pointed to a number of other interesting projects the company has going on in the wireless realm. For instance, the company is working on chips that expand the potential for location-based services by tapping more types of satellites. While GPS uses only American whirlybirds, data is also available now from Russian, Japanese and European satellites. The company is also working on technologies to improve location data inside buildings where satellites typically are of no help.

Another interesting area is in tablets. While much of the attention is on the iPad or its would-be rivals, McGregor said there is an emerging market for lower-end home units that can be given away by service providers like Comcast as another screen for users to consume content. While free tablets haven’t hit the U.S., McGregor said British Telecom and Japan’s NTT DoCoMo are among those offering such products.

Broadcom, like many chip companies at the show, was displaying its wares in a private display area. But on Friday afternoon the spacious booth was bustling with visitors. Broadcom had some interesting technologies on display:

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