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Charles.Desassure
Options. Options. The Smartphone market is now flooded with more Smartphone ...
Jack.L
Would that be sort of how they left the commoditized MP3 player market or how ...
Nokia N8's BOM costs similar to iPhone 4
Dylan McGrath
10/13/2010 6:49 PM EDT
SAN FRANCISCO—Nokia's N8 smarphone, which features a 12-megapixel CMOS image sensor, includes chips made by Synaptics Inc., Texas Instruments Inc., Broadcom Corp., Renesas Electronics Corp., STMicroelectronics NV, ST-Ericsson SA and Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd., according to a teardown analysis performed by market research firm iSuppli Corp.
Despite dramatic differences in the designs, the NB carrier a bill of materials (BOM) cost nearly identical to iPhone 4, according to the teardown analysis. The N8's BOM cost is $187.47, according to the teardown analysis, just 4 cents less than an iSuppli teardown found to be the BOM of the 16-Gbyte version of the iPhone 4 in June.
Andrew Rassweiler, principal analyst and teardown services manager at iSuppli, the N8's BOM is proof that Nokia is going after the touch-screen smartphone segment dominated by Apple. "Although the two phones differ markedly in key areas, including the camera and the core silicon, both are designed to hit similar production cost budgets," Rassweiler said.
Including about $9.50 to manufacture the N8, the total cost to produce the smartphone is about $196.97, iSuppli said. In the U.S., the N8 retails for $549 without a service contract.
While iPhones use conventional NAND flash, the N8 employees a slightly more expensive variant known as Embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC), according to iSuppli's teardown. The analysis found Toshiba Corp. was the supplier of the eMMC NAND in the specific N8 examined by iSuppli, though the firm noted that memory is always supplied by multiple vendors.
The N8 examined also carried additional OneNAND memory and DDR DRAM supplied by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., iSuppli said. Samsung Mobile Display is the supplier of the N8's Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display, the teardown found.
Other component highlights of the N8 revealed by iSuppli include:
Despite dramatic differences in the designs, the NB carrier a bill of materials (BOM) cost nearly identical to iPhone 4, according to the teardown analysis. The N8's BOM cost is $187.47, according to the teardown analysis, just 4 cents less than an iSuppli teardown found to be the BOM of the 16-Gbyte version of the iPhone 4 in June.
Andrew Rassweiler, principal analyst and teardown services manager at iSuppli, the N8's BOM is proof that Nokia is going after the touch-screen smartphone segment dominated by Apple. "Although the two phones differ markedly in key areas, including the camera and the core silicon, both are designed to hit similar production cost budgets," Rassweiler said.
Including about $9.50 to manufacture the N8, the total cost to produce the smartphone is about $196.97, iSuppli said. In the U.S., the N8 retails for $549 without a service contract.
While iPhones use conventional NAND flash, the N8 employees a slightly more expensive variant known as Embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC), according to iSuppli's teardown. The analysis found Toshiba Corp. was the supplier of the eMMC NAND in the specific N8 examined by iSuppli, though the firm noted that memory is always supplied by multiple vendors.
The N8 examined also carried additional OneNAND memory and DDR DRAM supplied by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., iSuppli said. Samsung Mobile Display is the supplier of the N8's Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display, the teardown found.
Other component highlights of the N8 revealed by iSuppli include:
- A touch screen controller supplied by Synaptics
- A digital baseband chip and a single-chip GPS device and audio power amplifier supplied by TI
- A mobile multimedia processor supplied by Broadcom
- A Bluetooth/wireless local area network IC supplied by Murrata
- AN RF transceiver, RF power management IC and power reset device, all supplied by ST-Ericsson
- A power amplifier supplied by Renesas
- Epcos AG’s front-end module
- AKM Semiconductor Inc.’s electronic compass
- A MEMS accelerometer from STMicro
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kdboyce
10/13/2010 11:47 PM EDT
The nice thing about the iSupply and Portelligent teardown services is that they can provide both "market intelligence" in terms of which and whose parts are used, but also in terms of relative BOM costs. However, they do not necessarily relate to the business practices of the firms which make the phones or which offer them on operator networks.
Similar to the comments on the recent LG $49 Android phone offerring (see http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4209404/LG-slashes-Android-phone-to-49), there will continue to be a fair amount of jockeying for market position as smart phones rapidly move to being the normal phone to have.
Besides the host of current applications for the iPhone and Android smartphones, the apps market is seeing a surge in augmented reality applications which will make these phones even more useful as a personal assistant and entertainment device and less as a phone, except in an emergency.
Small wonder the carriers and makers are attempting the shift as quickly as possible.
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chanj
10/14/2010 12:42 PM EDT
Knowing the BOM, consumers understand 1 side of price-value equation. In terms of performance, are they similar? I wonder who has done performance comparison of various smartphones.
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goafrit
10/14/2010 10:14 PM EDT
In 36 months, Apple will leave this market because it will be a commodity.Everyone wants to be smartphone maker.
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Jack.L
10/15/2010 11:55 AM EDT
Would that be sort of how they left the commoditized MP3 player market or how Dell and HP have left the commoditized PC market?
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Robotics Developer
10/14/2010 10:33 PM EDT
I am wondering what the reported differences are between the two: "the two phones differ markedly in key areas, including the camera and the core silicon". What are the differences and does it create a significant feature shift between the two? Is this expected to lead a consumer to desire one over the other? I have to confess to not want to surf the web, play games, watch movies, etc. on my phone; I am sure that I am in the minority here. The last upgrade to my phone was not for features but to replace old and failing units. The replacements have many new features (camera to name the most significant difference) but nothing that would have drawn me out to buy (especially considering the picture quality). I wonder where the phone feature progression will lead next and will it be an "improvement" or just another source of Type A personality stress. To me, the most important feature of a phone is phone service quality: cell coverage, poor connections, dropped calls, and the dreaded "no bars" is much more important than all the rest of the tech add-on. I'll hang up now and watch for answers..
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eewiz
10/15/2010 1:04 AM EDT
Although BOM costs looks similar in paper, I guess apple gets a better deal on the components because of the sheer volumes of iPhone. And only have one OS to deal with.
@goafrit
I dont think that will be the case. Because apple has already cleverly created many levels of customer lock in mechanisms with iTunes and APP store. if you go and buy a non apple product you simply cant use your existing music library. Apples market share will probably decrease but iPhone will stay.
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Charles.Desassure
10/16/2010 12:46 AM EDT
Options. Options. The Smartphone market is now flooded with more Smartphone options. I believe that consumers are still going to purchase the Apple Smartphone product because of its marketing and household name brand. Unless the other smart phones possess something that the consumer really need and want; Apple is still is going to be the King in the area for a while.
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