Broadcom chips aren't very well regarded in PC Gaming or Server enthusiast markets either, they're a step above Realtek. Oddly Intel is well regarded though...
It mostly comes down to drivers from what I understand but I'm not entirely familiar with all the objections.
> Broadcom chips aren't very well regarded in PC Gaming or Server enthusiast markets either
I always thought that it was funny that their NICs are much to be desired yet their ASICs power a wide variety of enterprise network switches capable of moving terabits of traffic at low latency.
Even Broadcom's wired NICs have different generations that came from different acquisitions: Tigon3 (tg3) came from Alteon AceNIC, I forgot where NetExtreme 2 (bnx2) came from, and NetExteme E (bnxt) is an in-house effort that is somewhat derived from the StrataXGS switches.
So yeah, Broadcom is a rollup of two dozen different companies so the quality of one product tells you nothing about others.
I would much rather have a realtek or intel controller than a broadcom one. My thinkpad has a realtek, my last laptop (an xps13) had an intel controller, and they just worked without issue.
Admittedly it's been a while since I had a broadcom controller, but I had all sorts of problems with it. Random disconnects etc.
I long ago realized that just buying an Intel wifi card and replacing whatever crap my laptop ships with is totally worth it. (At least many 15" laptops ship with replaceable cards, don't know about smaller ones).
Realteks also have documentation and thus open-source drivers, which was for a very long time (and very much still is) a problem with Broadcom's notorious closedness.
In my experience, Intel has higher performance and more features (which might be a downside from the point of complexity and configuration) at a higher cost, while Realtek is slower, but cheap, simple and reliable.
I dont think Broadcom's WiFI are inherently bad. If I have to argue ALL WiFi are bad.
The only reason why Realtek dominates is because they are the cheaper alternative. The only reason why Intel dominate WiFI on PC is because they are bundled as part of their CPU sales for Laptop.
Most of the half decent WiFI AP still uses Broadcom. Although increasingly Qualcomm is making inroad. So Boradcom is stuck in the middle of no where in consumer market. They dont have WiFi in PC Laptops, nor do they have WiFi in Android Smartphone. Apple being the largest Broadcom customer for their consumer grade WiFI. And that is why every 2-3 years you may have read Broadcom's intentional leaks about they want to sell their WiFi chipset division because they dont want to play balls with Apple's WiFi asking price.
You can't compare these two markets. Whether or not these chips work well comes down to firmware and drivers, and every customer gets their own custom datasheet, firmware, and driver. If you hack that into something good, your product will be good. (You're going to need to fix a lot of code and of course have a lot of meetings. Worth it if you're selling a million units, I suppose.) If you just buy some chips off the back of a truck in Shenzhen, solder them onto some circuit board you built in your garage, and use the three-years-out-of-date reference drivers written in a day by some random intern, the results will not be as good. Apple, I assume, uses the first approach when working with hardware vendors. The WiFi card you got for $3 on Amazon probably doesn't.
Don't take this as an endorsement of Broadcom or anything.
Dell is also following the first route and they shipped a PC(alienware) with shitty broadcom drivers(that was a 4yrs ago). I have avoided broadcom ever since..
It mostly comes down to drivers from what I understand but I'm not entirely familiar with all the objections.