Broadcom is up 5 percent. now that it managed to outdo what the market expected of it for the third consecutive quarter.

The chip maker reported a net income of $435 million, or $0.73 per share, compared to last year’s income of $0.72 per share. Analysts expected Broadcom to report 67 cents a share.

Revenue didn’t disappoint either. Sales rose to $1.97 billion from $1.8 billion in the same period a year ago, and on the high end of the company’s own range guidance of $1.9 billion to $2.0 billion. Wall Street proved to be slightly pessimistic again with a consensus estimate of $1.95 billion.

The reason Broadcom is doing so well is that it has not been limiting itself to just one, or even just a few segments.

“Broadcom designs a wide range of communications chips, and its products can be found in everything from Apple’s iPhone — where Broadcom’s chips provide WiFi connectivity — to a wide range of gear inside the sprawling data centers that support everything from social-networking sites to the distribution of mobile apps,” writes Forbes.

The networking market is fluctuating right now, and Broadcom’s very widely-spread portfolio is more suited to absorb these shifts compared to some of its other peers in the industry.  Cisco, for one, is not doing all that well.

We’ve learned just yesterday that the former is letting go two percent of its workforce, or over 1,000 workers, as a part of an effort to ‘simplify’ the company – lowering costs and boosting profits in light of fears that demand for data center networking equipment and services may decline in the near future.

At the same time Juniper, the second largest vendor in this industry behind Cisco, managed to beat analysts’ rather cautious expectations as well. It reported profit of 19 cents a share on sales of $1.07 billion.