Nokia 6101 Mobile Phone Teardown

Main Features

Mid-range clamshell camphone (VGA - no flash unit) tri-band GSM camera (w/EDGE), 1.75 Inch TFT display (128x160K, 65K color - 4K color secondary), IrdA but NO Bluetooth (exceptional in this group) - FM Radio (exceptional feature compared with this group)

Nokia 6101 Mobile Phone Main Image

Overview

The Nokia 6101 is a mid-range clamshell phone that looked so convincingly conventional, I thought it was a Samsung, an understandable misunderstanding, given Nokia's only recent launching of clamshell, slider, and 180 rotating phones. This phone has almost no standout features (an FM radio, but lacks Bluetooth), and is an average to below average mid-range clamshell phone.

Nokia 6101 Mobile Phone - Main PCB Bottom

As with the other mid-range clamshell phones being analyzed here, it is important to note again that what is now considered to be a 'basic' model these days (in developed countries, that is) keeps evolving, and this type of phone is considered, more and more as a basic model in many markets, and is likely to be heavily subsidized and sell in high volumes through certain service providers.

According to Nokia's press release information, and the popularity of this phone with T-Mobile and other service providers, it seems that like the Motorola V360 this phone is strictly mainstream in it's focus - no particular market niche. This product is aimed at being a high-volume mainstream phone subsidized by major carriers - T-Mobile, in this case.

Released

Original preliminary Nokia Press Release February 14, 2005. Based on more recent press releases, it seem sthat this phone has indeed been on the market nearly one year at the time of this analysis.

Availability

Appears, per the Nokia website and other web research, to be available currently through T-Mobile in the US and in Europe. Cannot find other evidence at this time of this phone being offered by other major carriers.

Volume Estimations

We are using the estimate of 9 M units for lifetime production.

Market Shares / Sector Performance

We estimate that Nokia maintains in dominant market share position in 2005 (based on global unit volumes for the first 3 quarters of 2005), of nearly 32%, up about 3% in share from their 2004 average, per iSuppli estimates.

Furthermore, in order to better estimate our market volumes for this particular unit, we consider several factors - such as the overall growth of EDGE phones, and Nokia's expected volume within that segment (using our Design Forecast Tool). ISuppli estimates that in 2005 EDGE handsets shipped 75 million units (all manufacturers worldwide), and that this figure is expected to double to 150 million units in 2006. Furthermore, we estimate Nokia's shipments for EDGE enabled phones (tri and quad band combined) to be approximately 50M units in 2005, decreasing to 76M units in 2006.

Nokia 6101 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.

This group of phones are no exception and distinguish themselves primarily by features, (Bluetooth, FM radio), air interface standard (EDGE or GPRS), and also on memory (there is a large amount of disparity between the 4 phones in this respect. This Nokia saves pennies all around by offering no Bluetooth, (but FM radio compensates costs somewhat), low-end memory, and inexpensive media processor. Overall - this phone is distinguished in being the least expensive of the bunch, further driven down in cost by the (possibly false) assumption that the unit was built entirely in China

Main Cost Drivers Representing ~60% of total materials costs:

Primary / Secondary Displays*

DBB/ABB Chipset

MCP - Flash 128Mb NOR / 16Mb SRAM

Bluetooth Module

Camera Module

Battery

* Does not include costs for interconnect PCB used by displays

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 EMS provider's and 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 Nokia 6101 was labeled as many Nokias are) as "made by Nokia. I am not sure how they skirt these labeling requirements, but in absence of proof to the contrary, we have chosen to assume that this model is produced in China. Furthermore it is assumed that domestic Chinese manufacturing applies not only to final assembly, but to the production of the PCBA. We still assume, however that most manufacturers producing finished product in Asia will utilize low cost China for production of mechanical components. Local labor rate assumptions are stated in the overview of this analysis.

Design for Manufacturing / Complexity

Overall - coming in at a component count of 562, the Nokia 6101, has a relatively low overall component count, when compared with this group of competing flip phones (clamshell) with nearly identical features, however, this component count is not exceptional for clamshell models, either high or low.

From a mechanical perspective (which is where clamshell or flip phone form factors tend to 'add' components to the BOM), at 108 components it is towards the low end for mechanical component count within this group of similar phones, and certainly inline with other flip phones. The mechanical count is typically a good relative gage of complexity and directly correlates to the cost of hand assembly and has a direct bearing on our calculation of manufacturing cost.

Design Notes

The DBB/ABB chipset used here is classic Nokia - DBB by TI, and ABB by ST Micro. The DBB is a chip we saw previously in our analysis of the Nokia 6020, and the ABB chip from ST has also been used in the 6020, 6230i and 3220 Nokia models.

The RF Transceiver was also used in the Nokia 6020. The PAM is a new part previously unseen in teardowns.

The FM radio module was also used in a very recent teardown we did of a Nokia Nokia 6280, except in that model, the FM radio was part of an integrated module from Murata (FA561776A) which consisted of Philips - TEA5761UK - FM Radio and CSR - BC41B143A - Bluetooth chip. As this model has no Bluetooth, there was nothing to integrate - but the more recent incarnation of the 6101 (6103) which features Bluetooth probably uses this combined FM/Bluetooth modular approach from Murata.

The camera (snap in module) follows the classic cookie cutter module approach Nokia invariably seems to use. This is a feat here - because typically flip phones tend to go for lots of extra flex PCBs to achieve the interconnect - but Nokia are clearly commited to their deisgn re-usage and keeping it simple seen here.

Baseband

• DBB - Digital Baseband Processor - Texas Instruments - NMP #4377011
• ABB - Analog Baseband Processor - ST Microelectronics - NMP #4376371

Memory

• Samsung MCP - K5U28178TM - Flash 128Mb Muxed NOR + 16Mb Muxed SRAM, Top Boot, 1.8V

PA/RF

• PAM - Agilent - QCPM-8895 - Tri-Band, GSM900/1800/1900
• RF Transceiver - ST Microelectronics - NMP #4380053

User-Interface

• FM Radio - Philips Semiconductor - TEA5761UK
• Image Processor - ST Microelectronics - STV0900BE

Camera

• CMOS (assumed) VGA camera module - manufacturer unknown

Display

• Primary: 1.75 Inch, Transflective (Assumed) TFT 128x160 pixels 65K Color
• Secondary: 1.3 Inch, 65x95 pixels 4096 Color

"

Nokia 6101 Mobile Phone - Enclosure Main Outer w/ Components Removed