Vizio VTAB1008 Tablet Teardown

Overview / Main Features

The Vizio VTAB1008 is an 8" Android (with "V.I.A. Plus" overlay) tablet from Vizio, better known for their line of televisions. Vizio is entering the fray of tablets, not just because a tablet makes for a cool way to control your TV, but it stems from the concerns of TV manufacturers that the emergence of tablets, which have begun to make PC manufacturers worry about the future relevance of PCs, so too have TV manufacturers begun to realize that the future of "TV" viewing is happening more and more on mobile devices and less and less in a living room in front of a large screen. TV manufacturers recognize, too, that connected TVs with essentially built in "PC-like" or smart functionality is also key to the TV experience moving forward.

In both cases, TV manufacturers are treading into new territories, and much of the developments made over the last 5 years in smartphones (applications processor improvements, and the dominance of Android OS) will find their way into TVs and clearly already have on tablets.

This Vizio tablet is just one of a host of new contenders in the space, and frankly, though recent reports suggest that the mass of these "non Apple" tablets are taking hold in numbers, no particular brand of tablet seems to stand out as having anything unique in the space. Vizio fits right in the middle of the rest of the pack with no particular standout qualities. It is, as has been said recently of this type of device, a "flat and black'.

The Vizio VTAB1008 has the basic features consumers would expect to see such as a WiFi, 4GB built in NAND Flash storage (with the possibility to upgrade), and although it's not very high powered, the Vizio also features a camera for chatting (only one - and only VGA). The Vizio is not and probably will never offer wireless service (3G/4G network coverage), as it appears this is more a home-bound device intended to "tether" to your TV and media center at home.

Target Market

General Consumers

Released

June 2011

Pricing and Availability

Pricing - Based on a cursory internet search - this tablet sells in a range of ~$190 to $260 USD at the time of writing (November 2011).

Availability - North America

Volume Estimations

For the purposes of this teardown analysis, we have applied a lifetime production volume of approximately 500 K units over 1.5 years.

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 are different by an order of magnitude, minor changes in volume (say 1 million vs. 2) rarely have a large net effect on our final analysis because of this.

Cost Notes

The Vizio VTAB1008 really makes a lot of "cheap" choices in terms of materials that ultimately make it cheap to produce - it has a low end display and "offbrand" touchscreen solution that comes up very inexpensively when compared with, for example, the Samsung 7" Galaxy tab from late 2010 (pricing has also eroded significantly since then). The Vizio also cheaps out on memory (using DDR3 rather than low power DDR or DDR2 as with most smartphones and tablets) - this makes the DRAM cheap but drains the battery. The enclosure is die cast magnesium (rather than the exotic machine aluminum unibody designs offered by Apple and even the new Kindle) which is much cheaper, etc. etc. etc.

Refer to BOM (XLS file) for detailed analysis

Main Cost Drivers (~75% of Total Materials Cost)

$32.00 - Innolux Display Corp - EJ080NA-04A - Display Module - 8" Diagonal, LCD, 1024 x 768 Pixels, 162.0mm x 121.7mm Active Area, w/ Integrated Flex PCBs & 27 Backlight LEDs (Qty:1)

$28.75 - Touchscreen / Display Window - 8" Diagonal, Capacitive, w/ Integrated Flex PCB, Foam Rubber Cushion & White Mylar Label (Qty:1)

$17.60 - Getac - BP-BRN-12/3000LS - Battery Pack - Li-Ion Polymer, 2-Cell, 3.7V, 6000mAh, 22.2Whr, w/ Power Management Circuit, Integrated 6 Discrete Wires, 1 6-Position Pin Socket Connector & Black Mylar Insulators (Qty:1)

$15.06 - Marvell - 88AP610-A1-BLO2C010-TUNV - Applications Processor - Marvell Sheeva ARM V7 CPU Core, 1GHz, 256KB L2 Cache, 1080P Video Decode & Encode, 16MP ISP, 45 MTPS 3D, w/ Integrated EPD Display Controller (Qty:1)

$5.81 - Broad Technology - - 8-Layer - FR4/RCF HDI, 2+4+2, Lead-Free (Qty:1)

$5.75 - Sandisk - SDIN5C2-4G - Flash - eMMC iNAND, 4GB, MLC (Qty:1)

$4.80 - Cybertan - NC024C - Bluetooth / FM / WLAN - SiP, Bluetooth V3.0, IEEE802.11a/b/g/n, FM Transceiver, Contains Marvell 88W8787 Single Chip, TCXO, Filters (Qty:1)

$3.10 - AC Adapter - 5V/2A, Wall to USB Type A, w/ Black Mylar Label & Protect Film (Qty:1)

$2.82 - Enclosure, Main, Bottom - Die-Cast Magnesium Alloy, Printed, w/ Rubberized Coating (Qty:1)

$2.00 - Samsung Semiconductor - K4B2G1646C-HCH9 - SDRAM - DDR3, 2Gb, 1.5V, 667MHz (Qty:2)

Direct Materials $157.07

Direct Materials + Manufacturing $165.65

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 in some circumstances the packaging and literature as well.

Manufacturing Notes

Country of Origin / Volume Assumptions

Based on device markings, we've based our analysis with the final assembly in China. Furthermore, we have assumed that custom mechanicals (plastics, metals, etc.) were also sourced in China.

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 wall power charger), 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 pincount of the device. This calculation is affected by country or region of origin as well.

Design for Manufacturing / Device Complexity

The HTC Flyer handset has an overall component count of 888 (excluding box contents) which makes this tablet fairly light in terms of complexity, especially when considering that most smartphones we analyze these days average closer to 1000 components. A lot of this lower complexity and count comes from the simple fact that the Vizio tablet has bare bones features and lacks a lot of extra bells and whistles.

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.

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

At the heart of every tablet, both in terms of user experience and cost, are the touchscreen and the display. The choice of each of these items, and how they are controlled, are key to how well the tablet ultimately works. In this device - the core is an 8" display (slightly larger than the lower end 7" point that has become common) from Innolux, and a conventional 8" capacitive touch display (source unknown). Recently we have begun to see a number of what we assume to be "offbrand" solutions for touchscreens which include controller ICs from new names - in this case EETI produces the touchcontrol ICs.

At the core of the Vizio tablet is a Marvell applications processor - which is interesting because it has been a while since we had seen a Marvell apps processor. This is a Marvell "Sheeva" ARM V7 CPU Core, 1GHz processor. This apps processor space is becoming the new place for all the major manufacturers to focus their development efforts (Samsung, Nvidia, TI, Intel and Marvell) as chip manufacturers see the mobile space as where most of the dollars spent on processing chips will utltimately go (rather than PCs dominated by Intel).

Other major devices in the Vizio VTAB1008 include SanDisk eMMC Flash (4GB), as well as 2Gb (bits) of DDR3 DRAM supporting the apps processor. It is interesting to note that Vizio aren't even using low power DRAM, but just conventional DDR3 which is cheaper than LPDDR or LPDDR2 but will be a battery drain.

Here is a summary of the major components used in the Vizio VTAB1008 design:

Display / Touchscreen

Display - Innolux Display Corp - EJ080NA-04A - 8" Diagonal, LCD, 1024 x 768 Pixels, 162.0mm x 121.7mm Active Area, w/ Integrated Flex PCBs & 27 Backlight LEDs

Touchscreen / Display Window - 8" Diagonal, Capacitive, w/ Integrated Flex PCB, Foam Rubber Cushion & White Mylar Label

Main PCB

Apps / Baseband Processing

Applications Processor - Marvell - 88AP610-A1-BLO2C010-TUNV - Marvell Sheeva ARM V7 CPU Core, 1GHz, 256KB L2 Cache, 1080P Video Decode & Encode, 16MP ISP, 45 MTPS 3D, w/ Integrated EPD Display Controller

Memory

Flash - Sandisk - SDIN5C2-4G - eMMC iNAND, 4GB, MLC

SDRAM - Samsung Semiconductor - K4B2G1646C-HCH9 - DDR3, 2Gb, 1.5V, 667MHz

Power Management

PMIC - Maxim - MAX8925EWN - Power Management IC

Display Bridge - Toshiba Semiconductor - TC358764XBG - MIPI DSI to LVDS

User Interface and Sensors

Audio Codec - Cirrus Logic - CS42L73-CWZ - Ultra Low Power, Stereo, w/ Mono 1W Headphone Amplifier

Microcontroller - Maxim - MAXQ610A-2524 - 16-Bit, RISC Core, 12MHz, 64KB Flash, 2KB SRAM, w/ Infrared Module

BT / FM / GPS / WLAN

Bluetooth / FM / WLAN - Cybertan - NC024C - SiP, Bluetooth V3.0, IEEE802.11a/b/g/n, FM Transceiver, Contains Marvell 88W8787 Single Chip, TCXO, Filters

GPS - CSR - GSD4T - SiRFstarIV, Single-Chip, -163dBm Sensitivity, 48 Channels Available for Acquisition, w/ Integrated LNA, 65nm

Camera Modules

Primary - VGA, 0.3MP, 1/8" Format, Fixed Lens, 2.5um x 2.5um Pixel Size