Qtek 8500 Mobile Phone Teardown

Main Features

The Qtek 8500 is a clamshell smartphone running Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone Edition with Push Mail. This smartphone is a quad-band GSM/EDGE, featuring a 1.3MP camera (no flash), with Bluetooth V1.2, USB connectivity, a 2.2' 65K Color TFT LCD and 1.2'TFT secondary displays.

Qtek 8500 Mobile Phone Main Image

Qtek - a subsidiary of HTC - is the OEM for this phone - based in Taiwan they have a certain marketing presence in Europe. One service provider that is currently offering this model is Vodafone.

Qtek only offer a grand total of 8 models of phone ?6 PDAs and 2 smartphones (one clamshell and one candybar/monoblock) of which this 8500 is one. It is marketed as a super slim smartphone, but really has the look and feel of the mid to low end of this definition of phone, but in this respect is very comparable to most of the phones against which this model is being compared.

Target Market

Mainstream users looking for more smartphone features that mimic more of the Blackberry-like e-mail functionality.

Qtek 8500 Mobile Phone (iSi) - Main PCB Top

Per companies website - 'coming to Europe in May'(2006) - dated 1/24/2006.

Pricing and Availability

Pricing: Unknown. Regional availability - per Qtek website: Europe

Qtek 8500 Mobile Phone (iSi) - Enclosure Disassembly

Based on HTC/Qtek's market shares, and our estimates of market volume shipments by manufacturers and market segments (see iSuppli Design Forecast Tool (DFT) data below), we are assuming a total production volume for this model of 280K units over a 2-year lifetime.

As a reminder, teardown volume production assumptions are meant primarily to be 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.

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.

From our most recent revision of this tool iSuppli estimates shipments of 74M quad-band EDGE (800/900/1800/1900) handsets in 2007 for the entire world market. Furthermore, we estimate a total of 16 million Windows-based mobile phones in 2007 (of which this model is a part). However, given HTC's paltry market share, we have assumed production volumes for this particular model will be modest, and will depend largely on pick-up by a major service provider, such as T-mobile (or Vodafone who currently offer the Qtek 8500), who have, in the past, offered HTC products under private-label arrangements.

Function / Performance

Functional testing was not performed on the Qtek 8500.

Qtek 8500 Mobile Phone Cost Analysis

Main Cost Drivers Representing ~73% of total materials cost

Display Module (Primary / secondary)

Texas Instruments - OMAP850AZVL - DBB - Digital Baseband Processor & Applications Processor - 130nm

M-Systems - MS13-D9SD9-C1-P - MCP - 64MB Flash DiskOnChip + 64MB 1.8V Low Power SDRAM

Camera Module - 1.3MP CMOS, 1/4' Format - Fixed Lens

Texas Instruments - TWL3027BZQW - ABB - Analog Baseband / Power Management

Sanyo - STAR160 - Battery - Li-Ion, 3.7V, 750mAh

Unitech ?Main PCB - 8-Layer - FR4 ALIVH

Delta - ADP-5FH - Charger - 5.0V, 1A

CSR - BC313141A19 - BlueCore3 Gateway - Single Chip Bluetooth Solution

PCB - Interconnect - 5 Layer Flex Kapton w/ Stiffener, Two 70 pin Board to Board Plug, w/ Shielding

RF Micro Devices - RF3158 - PAM - Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE

Career - PCB - 2-Layer - Flex Kapton

Infineon - PMB6272 - RF Transceiver - ZIF, Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Integrated VCO

Total BOM & Manufacturing Costs $97.62

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 and 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.

HTC Relationships / Manufacturing

HTC is an important ODM partner offering smartphones and PDAs to a number of international service providers, including Vodafone. Vodafone is in fact one of HTC's top customers. We believe that HTC are producing most of their phones in house. In fact, iSuppli globally sees that about 80% of handsets (all manufacturers mixed) in 2006 are produced 'in-house' by handset OEMs or ODMs, with a growing percentage of EMS-produced devices. HTC, as a Taiwanese company is assumed in our teardown analysis to produce, when possible, and where noted on the labels in mainland China, and sometimes in Taiwan.

Manufacturing Notes

Country of Origin / Volume Assumptions

This product is labeled as Made in China, furthermore, we have assumed that for this device, the PCB was also populated in China, and that custom mechanicals (plastics and metals) were also sourced domestically 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 chargers), 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.

The issue of labor rates was revisited in Q2 2006 as we began to apply some research by one the major worldwide EMS suppliers and are now applying some of their research on total loaded costs by country and region to arrive at these new rates which are pronouncedly higher on the low end in China. Remember 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.

Design for Manufacturing / Device Complexity

Clamshells or flip phones are typically more mechanically complex, with higher component counts and general complexity which add to manufacturing cycle times and costs. When comparing phones by features against each other, we typically also try to stay within these physical categories to make the component count and complexity comparisons most relevant.

At a component count of 794 components, of which 113 components are discrete mechanical components, this phone is average in compounent count and complexity, given the form factor and feature set. The nearest point of comparison, and perhaps not entirely fair because of the lack of secondary display might be the Motorola A1200 MING ?both clamshell smartphones. The Motorola MING features only 688 total component count and 96 mechanicals. Keep in mind still that a device such as the Qtek 8500 is still a far cry from the high-end of HTC's PDA spectrum where an XDAIII weighs in at nearly1500 components.

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 China.

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 Qtek 8500 is essentially the same in core silicon and features as HTC's S310 model, analyzed in parallel with this device. (HTC S310 also runs the same Microsoft Windows mobile OS, with 1.3MP camera but is a candybar phone.).

Here is a summary of the major components used in the Qtek 8500 design:

Main PCB

Baseband

• DBB - Texas Instruments - OMAP850AZVL - Digital Baseband Processor & Applications Processor - 130nm
• ABB - Texas Instruments - TWL3027BZQW - Analog Baseband / Power Management

Battery / Power Management

• Battery Charger - Intersil - ISL9203CRZR5220 - Li-ion/Li Polymer, 1.5A, 1%

Memory

• MCP - M-Systems - MS13-D9SD9-C1-P - 64MB Flash DiskOnChip + 64MB 1.8V Low Power SDRAM

RF/PA

• PAM - RF Micro Devices - RF3158 - Quad-Band, GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• RF Transceiver - Infineon - PMB6272 - Quad-Band, GSM850/EGSM900/DCS1800/PCS1900, ZIF, w/ Integrated VCO
• Antenna Switch Module ?Epcos - D5005 - Quad-Band, GSM850/EGSM900/DCS1800/PCS1900

User Interface

• CSR - BC313141A19 - BlueCore3 Gateway - Single Chip Bluetooth Solution

Camera Module

• Image sensor - OmniVision - OV9650 - 1.3MP, CMOS, 1/4' Format - 3.18um x 3.18um Pixel Size, 4.13mm x 3.28mm Active Image Area

Display Module

• 2.2' Diagonal, 65K Color TFT, 240 x 320 Pixels

Qtek 8500 Mobile Phone (iSi) - Box Contents