Samsung OMNIA SGH-i900 Mobile Phone Teardown

Overview / Main Features

Samsung's newly branded "OMNIA" smartphone denotes an all-encompassing design. The touchscreen handset features a 3.2 inch WQVGA display, slim profile and an un-apologetic design similarity to the Apple iPhone. The SGH-i900 is true smartphone running Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1. On top of the OS, Samsung has implemented a proprietary UI layer they refer to as "Touchwiz". As with other handset manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson and HTC innovating on top of the Windows Mobile operating system, Samsung attempts a different spin with the Touchwiz design approach. The user interface purports create user customizable experience whereby widgets can be dragged into the screen background from a widgets draw that slides out when not needed - much the same way that the Android powered HTC G1 implements their user interface.

Overall, the tri-band UMTS / quad-band GSM handset contains most of the pre-requisite feature sets required of advanced handsets in this category: integrated WLAN, aGPS, 5MP AF camera and ample memory (up to 16GB removable microSD media).

Target Market

High-end smartphone consumers

Released

Per press releases, first release in Singapore on June of 2008 and in Europe the following month.

Pricing and Availability

Pricing - Mobile handset pricing typically has little bearing on the true market value of the device due to the fact that service carrier invariably use subsidies to incentivize consumers to commit to long term service contracts. For example, the Samsung Omnia is offered free with participating service contracts by carriers such as Vodafone or for about $280 with a lower commitment service plan. A cursory review of boutique online handset resellers reveal that an unlocked Samsung Omnia lists for as low as $560.

Availability - At the time of writing (Nov. 2008), the Samsung Omnia SGH-i900 is available in select global markets such as Asia and Europe.

Volume Estimations

For the purposes of this teardown analysis, we have assumed a lifetime production volume of 1.5M units.

As a reminder, teardown volume production assumptions are primarily used for our cost analysis in terms of amortized NRE and tooling costs, especially for custom components specific to the model being analyzed (mechanical components especially). Unless assumed, volumes increment by an order of magnitude. Minor changes in volume (say 1 million vs. 2) rarely have a large net effect on our final analysis.

iSuppli's Design Forecast Tool (DFT) and Market Shares

As part of iSuppli's Design Forecast Tool (DFT), we forecast handset shipments by major design feature and manufacture, as well as the number of design starts a manufacturer will have by feature set.

iSuppli estimates unit shipments of 105 million HSDPA handsets in 2008 global market. We further estimate 33 million units of 5 megapixel camera phones to ship in the 2008 global market. All estimates are based on a 2 year product life span assumption with an overall global market share of 14% for Samsung.

Cost Notes

See BOM for analysis for details

Top Cost Drivers (Representing ~68% of Direct Materials Costs)

$22.14 - Primary Camera Module - 5.0MP, 1/3.2" Format, Auto Focus Lens

$21.71 - Qualcomm - MSM6281 - Baseband Processor - Single Chip, GSM/EDGE, WCDMA/HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps, w/ Integrated MDDI & Bluetooth 1.2 Baseband Processor

$13.90 - Display Module - 3.2" Diagonal, 262K Color TFT, 400 x 240 Pixels

$11.30 - Touchscreen Overlay - 4-Wire Resistive, Black Paint on Edge, w/ Flex PCB

$11.00 - Samsung Semiconductor - KMCME0000M-B998 - Flash - NAND, 8GB, MLC

$10.71 - Marvell Technology - 88AP312-BGW1 - Applications Processor - Monahans, 312MHz, PoP

$8.30 - Samsung Semiconductor - K5W2G1HACA-DL75 - MCP - 2Gb OneNAND Flash, 1Gb Mobile SDRAM, PoP (Assumed)

$6.50 - Sychip - WLAN / Bluetooth Module - 802.11b/g, Bluetooth V2.0+EDR

$3.60 - Samsung Semiconductor - K5D1258DCA-AD90 - MCP - 512Mb NAND Flash + 256Mb Mobile SDRAM

$3.50 - Battery - Li-Ion, 3.7V, 1440mAh (Estimated)

Direct Materials Cost$164.51

Materials and Manufacturing$170.49

What Is Not Included in our Cost Analysis

The total materials and manufacturing costs reported in this analysis reflect ONLY the direct materials cost (from component vendors and assorted EMS providers), AND manufacturing with basic test. Not included in this analysis are costs above and beyond the material manufacture of the core device itself - cost of intellectual property, royalties and licensing fees (those not already included into the per component price), software, software loading and test, shipping, logistics marketing and other channel costs including not only EMS provider and the OEM's margin, but that of other resellers. Our cost analysis is meant to focus on those costs incurred in the manufacture of the core device and exceptionally in some circumstances the packaging and literature as well.

Manufacturing Notes

OEM/ODM/EMS Relationships / Manufacturing

According to iSuppli's "Global OEM Manufacturing and Design Analysis - Mobile Handsets Q1 2008", Samsung is traditionally an all in-house manufacturing operation. Only recently has Samsung begun to partner with Foxconn as an EMS partner which registers barely 0.2% of their overall manufacturing capacity. Within the scope of Samsung's internal manufacturing capability, about 70% of their products are made in Korea and 30% are made in lower cost countries such as China and India.

Country of Origin / Volume Assumptions

Based on markings, the unit was assembled in Korea. Furthermore, we have assumed that custom mechanicals (plastics, metals, etc.) were also sourced in Korea.

Country of origin assumptions relate directly to the associated cost of manufacturing, where calculated by iSuppli. In the cases of "finished" sub-assemblies (such as display module), we do not calculate internal manufacturing costs, but rather assess the market price of the finished product in which case country of origin assumptions may or may not have a direct effect on pricing.

Remember also that labor rates are applied directly only to hand inserted components and systems in our bill of materials, and although regional assumptions do, these new rates do not have a direct effect on our modeled calculations of placement costs for automated SMD assembly lines. "Auto" inserted components (such as SMT components) placement costs are calculated by an iSuppli algorithm which allocates a cost per component based on the size and pin-count of the device. This calculation is affected by country or region of origin as well.

Design for Manufacturing / Device Complexity

The Samsung OMNIA has an overall component count of 921 (excluding box contents), of which, 157 are mechanical in nature. When compared to the Apple iPhone 3G, the OMNIA has a slightly simpler design with respect to the 1116 component count found in the Apple handset. Mechanically, the Samsung is on par with the iPhone in terms of complexity. Electronically, it features fewer passive components than either the HTC Diamond or the Apple iPhone.

Component counts have a direct bearing on the overall manufacturing cycle times and costs, and also can increase or decrease overall yields and re-work. Our calculations of manufacturing costs factor counts and more qualitative complexities in the design. The cost of manufacturing is also, to some extent, decreased in this case because of assumed labor rate applied for Korea.

Note that manual labor has a much smaller effect on auto-insertion assembly lines (for the Main PCB, for example), where manufacturing costs are much more capital equipment intensive and driven by these investment costs.

Design Notes

The Samsung OMNIA design appears to be more IC-rich than other handsets within this competitive set. In addition to the Qualcomm MSM6281 baseband processors, Samsung employs an additional Marvell Applications processor to run its proprietary UI and applications. While other Windows Mobile powered devices such as the HTC and Sony Ericsson make due with the integrated apps processor within the Qualcomm MSM chipset, Samsung had opted for the extra processing power of a dedicated applications processor.

Likewise, the OMNIA carries this dedicated functionality design theme to the camera module by embedding a dedicated image processor chip onto the assembly. This design off-loads the image process tasks of the operating system and associated ICs but shifts considerable cost to the camera module.

Here is a summary of the major components used in the Samsung OMNIA SGH-i900 design:

Main PCB

Baseband

• Baseband Processor - Qualcomm - MSM6281

MPU / Memory

• Applications Processor - Marvell Technology - 88AP312-BGW1
• MCP - Samsung Semiconductor - K5W2G1HACA-DL75

User Interface

• Image Processor - Fujitsu - MBG024

Memory

• Flash - Samsung Semiconductor - KMCME0000M-B998
• MCP - Samsung Semiconductor - K5D1258DCA-AD90
• SRAM - Cypress Semiconductor - CYDMX128A16-65BVXI

Battery / Power Management

• Power Management IC - Qualcomm - PM6658
• LED Driver - Rohm - BD6086GU

User Interface

• Video Processor - Imagis - ISE2200

WLAN / Bluetooth

• WLAN SoC - Marvell Technology - 88W8686

RF Transceiver

• RF Transceiver - Qualcomm - RTR6285

Display

• Display Module - 3.2" Diagonal, 262K Color TFT, 400 x 240 Pixels

Samsung OMNIA SGH-i900 Mobile Phone_(iSi) - Box Contents