Motorola C115 Mobile Phone Teardown

Main Features

Entry-level barebones dual-band GSM (not GPRS enabled) phone with 1.55 monochrome screen, monophonic ringtones, and 16Mb flash memory / 2Mb PSRAM.

Motorola C115 Mobile Phone Main Image

Marketing/Positioning

Overview

The Motorola C115 is certainly the lowest end Motorola phone we have seen to date, and, just as it's competitors, such as the Nokia 1110, and Siemens A70 - this phone represents Motorola's version of the basic entry-level phone aimed primarily at emerging markets, but may also be marketed to prepaid service providers and generally cost-conscious markets. Because of the nature of the market it is sold into, it's main 'feature' as focused upon by Motorola, is battery lifetime.

Target Market(s)

Emerging markets primarily.

Released

The first available press release at Motorola's Media Center is from December 15, 2004 and was aimed at the Polish market.

Motorola C115 Mobile Phone - Main PCB Top - Display Mounted

Per the above press release, the C115 is certainly available in Poland, however it is known to have been released in India in 2005 by one service provider as well. Oddly enough, when browsing the Motorola site it appears as being available in mostly developed countries: Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Czech Republic, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Roumania, Russia, Spain, Turkey, and the UK.

Volume Estimations

We are using the estimate of 15M units for lifetime production, based on Motorola's relatively strong worldwide presence and the nature of emerging markets as well as the affordability of this phone model. As a reminder, volume production assumptions primarily affect our cost analysis in terms of amortized NRE and tooling costs, especially for custom components specific to the model being analyzed (mechanical components especially).

Market Shares / Sector Performance

We estimate that Motorola had an average market share in 2004 (based on global unit volumes), of approximately 15%, and that that figure was already more like 17% in the first two halves of 2005. Furthermore, in order to better estimate our market volumes for this particular unit, it is important to note that GPRS phones represent about half of all unit sales for handsets in 2004-05 - non GPRS enabled (GSM only) phones represent a small (9% estimated in 2005) of total worldwide mobile handset shipments which are estimated at 780M units for 2005.

Motorola C115 Mobile Phone Cost Analysis

Phone costs are largely feature driven, but also driven by general manufacturing complexity, design for manufacturing (or DFM), component counts and of course the country where they are assembled. And even though this phone and others against which it is being compared are all very low-end phones, the main cost drivers are typically always in the same order of importance, roughly speaking, and this phone is no exception.

Main Cost Drivers Representing 70% of total materials costs:

DBB - Philips - OM6357

Display - 1.7' Diagonal 101 x 80 Monochrome

Battery - Li-ion - 3.7V, 720mAh

PCB - 8-Layer - Compeq

RF Transceiver - Quad Band - Philips Semiconductor

Charger - Astec

MCP - 16Mb Flash, 2Mb PSRAM - STM

PAM - Quad-Band - Skyworks

Manufacturing and Materials*

* - The total materials and manufacturing costs reported in this analysis reflect only the direct materials cost (from component vendors and assorted EMS providers), manufacturing and test. Not included in this analysis are costs above and beyond the manufacture of the core device itself - cost of shipping, logistics, marketing and other channel costs including not only 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 any literature, packaging, and accessories supplied with the phone itself.

Manufacturing Notes

Country of Origin / EMS provider

This Motorola C115 was produced in China, per the manufacturing label on the phone (packed in Singapore per the box label). Furthermore it is assumed that domestic Chinese manufacturing applies not only to final assembly, but to the production of the PCBA and custom mechanical components. Local labor rate assumptions are stated in the overview of this analysis. The famously low Chinese labor rates in effect currently keep the percentage of manufacturing cost (as a percent of total cost) relatively low.

Design for Manufacturing / Complexity

The C115, despite being a low-end phone had a surprisingly large component count at a total of 376 components, of which 258 are passive components, and 59 are mechanical. These are two critical component categories as each tend to drive the overall manufacturing cost - one from an auto-insertion point of view, and the other from a hand-assembly point-of-view. Overall - at 376 components, the Motorola C115 is relatively less integrated when compared with other basic phones in terms of overall component count and complexity. However, overall the C115 has the highest component count when compared with the Alactel OT155, Sagem MyX1-2, Nokia 1110, and Siemens A70 - all in the same range.

From a mechanical perspective, at 59 components it is inline with similar phones. The mechanical count is typically a good relative gage of complexity and directly correlates to the cost of hand assembly.

Design Notes

The DBB and ABB chipset are the same used in the Sagem MyX1-2 (analyzed in parallel with this device), however in general this design shares broad chip commonalities with many other previously analyzed phones from various manufacturers - not Motorola specifically.

Baseband

• DBB - Digital Baseband - Texas Instruments - D751749GHH
• ABB - Analog Baseband - Texas Instruments - TWL3014C

Memory

• Flash - Intel - GE28F160C3TD70 - 16Mb (1Mx16-bit), 3V, 70nS
• SRAM - AMIC Technologies - LP62S16128BU-70LLT - 2Mb (128K x 16-bit), 3V, 70nS

RF/PA

• PAM - Skyworks - SKY77324-12 - Quad-Band
• RF Transceiver - Texas Instruments - TRF6151C - Quad-Band

Display

• 1.55' Diagonal 96 x 64 Pixel B&W

"

Motorola C115 Mobile Phone - Front View - Front Enclosure and Keypad Assembly Removed