HTC Wildfire Mobile Handset Teardown

Overview / Main Features

The HTC Wildfire is one of a new breed of affordable smartphones featuring Android and Qualcomm MSM72xx baseband processors designed to drive down overall BOM costs. The 3.2 inch touchscreen handset represents a significant size reduction to the typical 3.7 inch designs seen on the high-end Android handsets but the Wildfire does pack most, if not all, of the features found in the more costly devices such as capacitive touch, 5MP camera, GPS, BT/WLAN, accelerometer and even HTC's much lauded Sense UI overlay.

Overall, the dual-band UMTS / quad-band GSM handset is HSDPA capable on 900 and 2100 MHz frequencies making the device a European and Asian centric 3G handset. The Wildfire has approximately 4Gb of onboard NAND which is partitioned and shared with the OS image. Also, a 2GB microSD card is made available to off load additional storage needs.

HTC Wildfire Mobile Handset Main Image

Affordable smartphone segment

Released

May 2010

HTC Wildfire Mobile Handset - Main PCB Top

Pricing - An unlocked version of the Wildfire sells thru various online retailers in the US for approximately $350. Elsewhere in its targeted markets, the Wildfire likely is offered for free with service contracts.

Availability - Europe and Asia

Volume Estimations

For the purposes of this teardown analysis, we have applied a lifetime production volume of approximately 2M 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 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.

HTC Wildfire Mobile Handset - Main PCB Bottom

Main Cost Drivers ~80% of Total Materials Cost

Qualcomm - MSM7225 - Baseband Processor - Quad-Band GSM/EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA 7.2Mbps, HSUPA 5.76Mbps, Integrated 528MHz ARM11 Applications Processor, 65nm

Display Module Value Line Item - 3.2' Diagonal, 16.7M Color TFT, 240x320 Pixels

Samsung Semiconductor - KA1000012M-BJTT - MCP - 4Gb NAND Flash + 3Gb Mobile DDR (Estimated)

Touchscreen Assembly - 3.5' Diagonal, Capacitive, ITO Film Over Glass Faceplate, Painted, w/ Integral Flex PCB, & Board to Board Connector

Camera Module Value Line Item - 5.1MP, CMOS, 1/4' Format, Auto Focus Lens

UniMicron Technology - 10-Layer - FR4/RCF HDI, 3+4+3, Lead-Free

Broadcom - BCM4329EKUBG - Bluetooth/FM/WLAN - Single Chip, WLAN IEEE802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth V2.1+EDR, FM Radio Receiver & Transmitter, 65nm

Samsung Semiconductor - MMAGR02GUECA-2MB - MicroSD Memory Card - 2GB

BB96100 - Battery - Li-Ion, 3.7V, 1300mAh

Emerson Network Power - TC E250 - Charger - AC to USB, 5V, 1A

Qualcomm - PM7540 - Power Management IC - w/ Integrated USB Transceiver

Qualcomm - RTR6285 - RF Transceiver - ZIF, Quad-Band GSM/EDGE, Tri-Band WCDMA/HSDPA Transceiver w/ Receive Diversity, Integrated GPS Receiver

Atmel - ATMXT224-CU - Touchscreen Controller - Capacitive, 12-bit, 224-Channel, w/ I2C Compatible Interface

Handsfree Accessory - Stereo, Earphone / Microphone, w/ Single Control Button & Plastic Clip

Skyworks - SKY77336-21 - PAM - Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, w/ Integrated Power Control

Optical Trackpad PCB Assembly Value Line Item

Direct Materials + Manufacturing $115.85

HTC Wildfire Mobile Handset Cost Analysis

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

Country of Origin / Volume Assumptions

Based on the level of sophistication and function of the device, we made the assumption that the unit was assembled in Taiwan. Furthermore, we have assumed that custom mechanicals (plastics, metals, etc.) were also sourced in Taiwan.

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), 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.

HTC Wildfire Mobile Handset - Disassembly View 1

Design for Manufacturing / Device Complexity

The HTC Wildfire under analysis here has an overall component count of 834 (excluding box contents), of which, 722 reside on the main PCB. HTC typically occupy the extreme ends of our complexity chart. Even for a purported low-end smartphone, the Wildfire comes in at higher than most other OEMs like Nokia and Samsung for the same level of functionality.

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 Taiwan.

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 Wildfire features an updated MSM7225 baseband processor. We have seen MSM7200 series baseband processors in the first generation Android handsets. Since then, most handset OEMs have updated to QSD8x50 series Snapdragon baseband processors for their high end offerings. Qualcomm respun the MSM7225 for the low cost smartphone segment which makes it an excellent candidate for this slot in a device like the Wildfire.

The 3.2 inch display used in the Wildfire is 320 x 240 resolution - the lowest resolution currently supported on HTC Android handsets but does give the OEM a considerable savings in BOM cost.

On the user interface front, HTC maintains the manufacturer slots for acceleromenter (Bosch), e-compass (AKM) and capacitive touch controller (Atmel).

Here is a summary of the major components used in the HTC Wildfire design:

Display

• Display Module - 3.2' Diagonal, 16.7M Color TFT, 240x320 Pixels

Main PCB

Apps Processing / Baseband

• Baseband Processor - Qualcomm - MSM7225

BT / FM / GPS / WLAN

• Bluetooth/FM/WLAN - Broadcom - BCM4329EKUBG

Memory

• MCP - Samsung Semiconductor - KA1000012M-BJTT, 4Gb NAND Flash + 3Gb Mobile DDR (Estimated)

RF / PA

• RF Transceiver - Qualcomm - RTR6285
• PAM - Skyworks - SKY77336-21, Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, w/ Integrated Power Control
• PAM - Avago Technologies - ACPM-5408, WCDMA/HSDPA 900, 880-915MHz
• PAM - Avago Technologies - ACPM-5401, WCDMA/HSDPA 2100, 1920-1980MHz

User Interface

• Touchscreen Controller - Atmel - ATMXT224-CU
• Electronic Compass - AKM Semiconductor - AK8973S
• Accelerometer - Bosch Sensortec - BMA150

HTC Wildfire Mobile Handset - Box Contents