HTC's "Nexus Two" sees $163.35 Bill of Materials

HTC Droid Incredible as possible followup to Google phone

HTC’s new Droid Incredible smart phone carries a Bill of Materials (BOM) of $163.35, according to a dissection conducted by iSuppli’s Teardown Analysis Service.

“The Droid Incredible could have been dubbed the ‘Nexus Two’ given its similarity to HTC’s Nexus One introduced early this year,” said Andrew Rassweiler, director and principal analyst and teardown services manager for iSuppli. “Indeed, the phones are very similar in terms of costs and features, with the main difference being the Incredible’s support for the CDMA air standard used by carrier Verizon in the United States.”

The Nexus One’s BOM amounted to $174.15, based on iSuppli’s January pricing estimate, very close to the current materials cost for the Incredible. The centerpiece of both phones is an advanced Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display. Both phones also share a common electronic design based on Qualcomm Inc.’s 1GHz Snapdragon baseband processor. Finally, the Incredible and Nexus One both integrate a class-leading density, at 4Gbit, of Mobile Double Data Rate (DDR) DRAM to support the processor.

Beyond the use of CDMA in the Incredible, only a few other differences distinguish the phone from the Nexus One. The Incredible, for one, uses an optical track pad, as opposed to the trackball on the Nexus One. Furthermore, the Incredible employs HTC’s Sense User Interface (UI) overlay, whereas the Nexus uses the generic Android UI. When the $8.90 manufacturing cost is added in, the combined BOM and production expense for the Incredible amounts to $172.25.

Qualcomm, Samsung and Hynix lead the BOM parade

The most expensive section of the Incredible is the baseband/applications processor, at a cost of $31.40, and accounting for 19.2 percent of the smart phone’s total BOM. This section is dominated by Qualcomm’s baseband Integrated Circuit (IC), which includes the Snapdragon processor.

Coming in at a close second in terms of expense is the display and touch screen section at a cost of $31.20, or 19.1 percent of the BOM. The AMOLED display portion of this subsystem is supplied by Samsung Mobile Display.

Next in the ranking is the memory section, at a cost of $29.80 and accounting for 18.2 percent of the BOM. In the individual Incredible phone unit torn down by iSuppli, this section consists of NAND flash memory and mobile Double Data Rate (DDR) DRAM from Samsung Electronics and more NAND from Hynix Semiconductor. However, iSuppli believes that HTC is likely using additional sources of supply for these commodity memory parts.

Broadcom, Texas Instruments and Atmel get Incredible wins

Other major functional sections and suppliers include:

• The Bluetooth/WLAN section, at a cost of $8.45 or 5.2 percent of the BOM, featuring a Broadcom chip that combines Bluetooth, FM and WLAN support.
• The power management section, with an expense of $7.25 and amounting to 4.4 percent of the BOM, including semiconductors from Qualcomm and Texas Instruments 
•  The user interface functions, costing $5.55 and accounting for 3.4 percent of the BOM, featuring an Atmel touch screen controller, an Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM) electronic compass and a Bosch Sensortec accelerometer (see ST's and freescales bid inthis area)
• The Radio Frequency (RF) transceiver section, with a cost of $5 and representing 3.1 percent of the BOM, centered on a single-chip RF device from Qualcomm.
•  The power amplifier section, at a cost of $2.60 and BOM share of 1.6 percent, featuring two transmit modules from Avago Technologies and TriQuint Semiconductor

For more information on iSuppli’s Droid Incredible Teardown, please visit: http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns-Manufacturing-and-Pricing/Pages/It-s-Incredible-HTC-Incredible-Teardown.aspx?PRX

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Shipments of Cell Phone Motion Sensors to Rise Fivefold by 2014

Unit shipments up but ASPs fall

Global shipments of motion sensors for cell phones are expected to quintuple by 2014 as smart phones and their operating systems increasingly support motion command and navigation applications that require these parts, say market researchers iSuppli.
Shipments of cell phone motion sensors — accelerometers, compasses, gyroscopes and pressure sensors — will rise to 2.2 billion units in 2014, up from 435.9 million in 2009. Revenue will amount to slightly more than $1 billion in 2014, up from $316 million in 2009.
Motion sensors such as accelerometers and compasses already play a key role in the functionality of smart phones like the iPhone or Google phones. Accelerometers detect when a phone with a large touch screen has been turned on its side, allowing the device to switch from portrait to landscape view. They also play a key role in gaming and navigation functions, and increasingly in augmented reality and context-awareness applications.
The expanding presence of accelerometers in cell phones also can be seen in the hundreds of Independent Design Houses (IDHs) in China adopting motion sensors in 2009. Nearly 20 percent of the global shipments of accelerometers for cell phones went to China in 2009, iSuppli estimates, with the vast majority used in the Chinese gray handset market.

Accelerometers speed ahead In 2014, accelerometers will account for 44 percent of total motion sensor revenue for cell phones. By that time, 65 percent of all phones will incorporate accelerometers, up from 2 percent in 2007 and 28 percent in 2009.
Falling prices for 3-axis parts will promote the growth of accelerometer sales. Prices for low-end, 6-bit 3-axis accelerometers are set to decline to 34 cents by 2014, down from 90 cents in 2008. The share of higher-end 12-to-14 bit accelerometers will increase because these are essential for more sophisticated hand gesture recognition and navigation applications.

Compasses point up “Shipments of compasses for cell phones exploded in the second half of 2009,” said Jérémie Bouchaud, director and principal analyst, Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) for iSuppli. “In 2009, 19 percent of GPS phones used a compass, up from 4 percent in 2008.”
Compasses support navigation, enabling auto rotation of maps to match the direction a user is facing. Augmented reality applications that combine the compass, GPS signal and camera are also a big driver in Android phones and in the iPhone 3Gs.
“These attributes are so compelling to consumers that competing smart phone platforms, including Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Mobile Windows 7, are promoting or even mandating support for these features. This will cause shipments of compasses for mobile phones to boom during the coming years.”

Gyroscopes spin up Mobile handset makers showed little interest in gyroscopes until early 2009. That changed, however. in mid 2009 following the success of the Nintendo Wii Motion Plus and the advent of a cascade of new gyroscopes with 2 and 3 axes from InvenSense and STMicroelectronics.
Gyroscopes are expected to enter the first smart phones this summer. The main applications in 2010 and 2011 will comprise a user interface utilizing a gyroscope in combination with an accelerometer, followed by image stabilization and dead-reckoning for in-vehicle navigation. From 2012, gyroscopes will start to be used for in-door navigation in combination with an accelerometer, compass and pressure sensor for floor accuracy. By 2014, the market for gyroscopes in cell phones is expected to amount to $190 million.

Semi opportunity With the anticipated upsurge of motion sensor shipments in the years to come, additional opportunities along the supply chain will be created for semiconductor companies, affording participation to the manufacturers of processors, microcontrollers and navigation chipsets, iSuppli believes. At present, new architectures are being explored that can offload the application processor, optimize power consumption at the system level and improve response time.

Related motion sensor articles

• Qualtre raises $8M for motion sensor chips for consumer electronics (games.venturebeat.com)
• iSuppli Ranks InvenSense as Top MEMS Company and Consumer Gyroscope Supplier for 2009 (eon.businesswire.com)
• InvenSense Unveils Next Generation MotionProcessing Solutions for Mobile Handsets at CTIA (prweb.com)
• Augmented Reality on iPhone Applications (slideshare.net)
• Next-Gen Accelerometers Will Have Temperature Sensor Amongst Other Cool Functions [Accelerometers] (gizmodo.com)

EETimes.com - ST owns EU-registered iPad patent

ST owns EU-registered iPad patent

It seems from EETimes that STMicroelectronics has laready registered IPAD as a brand in Europe, which may give Apple a few problems. But the branding runs out in September this year, so ST could renew it as the incumbent, or let it pass to Apple, presumably for a consideration (or a component partnership....hmm, how about an accelerometerer deal?)

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• ITC investigating Nokia claim that iPhones, iPods, Macs infringe its patents (infoworld.com)

STMicroelectronics Unveils MEMS Digital Compass Module

High-performance motion and magnetic-sensing device enhances mobile navigation and enables advanced location-based services

STMicroelectronics has integrated a 3-axis digital accelerometer with a 3-axis digital magnetic sensor in a single module to create a digital compass module. This uses magneto-resistive technology from Honeywell and aims to accelerate the adoption of enhanced electronic compassing in portable consumer applications, including direction finding, map/display orientation, location-based services and pedestrian dead reckoning.
The combination of high-performance motion and magnetic sensing enhances the mobile-user experience in a number of ways. ST’s new module adds forward direction orientation that enables application developers to improve the use of limited phone/PDA display size for maps by putting the current user position at the bottom of the map with the rest of the display in the forward (‘up ahead’) direction.
ST’s digital compass provides accurate heading information, to indicate the direction in which a person or vehicle is moving, when GPS is not available. It also supports dead-reckoning applications, including pedestrian navigation in places with no or low GPS signal, such as inside buildings and structures or in mountainous and forested terrain.
Compass modules in handsets open new possibilities for advanced location-based services. With compassing and GPS capabilities, consumers will be able to identify and retrieve information on nearby points of interest, such as restaurants or shops, by simply pointing their mobile devices in the direction of the object concerned.

”As the one-stop MEMS supplier of choice, STMicroelectronics is paving the way to smart sensor modules,” said Benedetto Vigna, Group Vice President and General Manager of the MEMS, Sensors and High Performance Analog Division, STMicroelectronics. “We have accelerometers, gyroscopes, microphones and now, thanks to our cooperation with Honeywell, also magnetic sensors. We are ushering in an era of integrated sensing capabilities.”

The new module uses high-precision sensing coupled with smart embedded features, including wake-up/power-down function and 6D recognition, which signals if the device is up or down along all three axes (x,y,z). The device has a linear acceleration full-scale of ±2/±4/±8g and a magnetic field full-scale from ±1.3 up to ±8 gauss(2), both fully selectable by the user.

The magnetic sensing element that measures the strength and direction of the Earth’s magnetic field and determines the heading relative to magnetic north is based on Honeywell’s Anisotropic Magneto-Resistive (AMR) technology. This technology combines best-in-class accuracy in compass calculations with low power consumption, which is crucial in battery-hungry portable devices.

The AMR technology provides the same sensitivity on the z axis as it does on the x and y axes, eliminating the need for flux concentrators used in Hall-effect type sensors that can shift the sensor offset after it has been magnetized. This market-unique three-axis sensing approach reduces measurement errors in ultra-low magnetic field strength environments, such as in metal buildings, automobiles, or in higher latitudes like Canada or Northern Europe.

Moreover, Honeywell’s magnetic sensor design includes a built-in offset cancellation circuit to minimize the need for calibration, and patented set/reset straps that de-gauss, or de-magnetize, the sensor for each measurement to improve accuracy.



According to iSuppli, the market for MEMS digital compasses for use in mobile phone applications alone will grow from 8 million units in 2008 to 540 million units in 2013 – a CAGR of 129%. During the same time period, revenues for these components will grow at a CAGR of 110%, from $8 million to $325 million.


ST’s LSM303DLH digital compass module fits in an eco-friendly package of 5x5x1 mm and it is software- and register-compatible with ST’s three-axis digital accelerometer family (LIS331DLH/M/F). Samples are available and the device is ready for mass production. Unit pricing is $2.50 for volumes in the range of 50,000 pieces.

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• STMicroelectronics' 3-axis MEMS gyroscope gives a new level of control to your mobile (engadget.com)
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