Hock Tan isn’t easily dissuaded. It is a quality that has served the Broadcom CEO very well over the last few years as he has cobbled together one of the largest and most successful chip companies in the world.
But there is a time to stand down or, in the case of Mr. Tan, to live to fight another day. His dogged pursuit of Qualcomm—a notably larger company in both employees and revenue—was a bold gambit that would have made Broadcom the world’s third largest chip maker, trailing only Samsung and Intel Corp. But Broadcom...