Blackberry Curve 8300 Mobile Phone Teardown

Main Features

The Blackberry Curve 8300 is a quad-band EDGE capable candybar smartphone. It features a 2.5 inch 65K TFT display, a QWERTY keypad, 2.0MP Camera w/ Flash, a pre-loaded map, Enhanced Media Player, Web Browser, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR and MicroSD/Transflash memory card slot.

Blackberry Curve 8300 Mobile Phone Main Image

The Curve 8300 is the smallest and lightest full QWERTY BlackBerry smartphone. With its Quad-band capability, QWERTY keypad and the navigation track ball, the 8300 continues to be one of the easiest smart phone to use especially in the email aspect which Blackberry is famous for.

Target Market

Mostly mainstream crossover PDA users. RIM has been focusing more on the main stream consumers instead of serious business users in recent years as other competitors such as Palm, Nokia and Motorola has products that closely resemble RIM products in terms of functionality.

Blackberry Curve 8300 Mobile Phone - Main PCB Top

Spring 2007 per RIM press release.

Pricing and Availability

$199 with a 2-year contract and $100 mail in rebate from cingular

Blackberry Curve 8300 Mobile Phone - Enclosure Disassembly

For the purposes of this teardown, we estimate unit shipments for the Blackberry 8300 over the course of an 18 month to 2 year production lifetime would be on an order of magnitude around 3 M units.

As a reminder, volume production assumptions are not meant to be necessarily market accurate - but 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).

ISuppli Design Forecast Tool (DFT) and Market Shares

As part of iSuppli 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.

In 2007 we estimate that about 245 million EDGE handsets shipped during the course of the year. Of this figure, we estimate that 80 million are Quad-band EDGE cabable. Research in Motion has a small position in the overall handset marketplace and we forecast a total shipment of 9 million RIM handsets in the year of 2007.

Function / Performance

No testing was performed on this unit.

Blackberry Curve 8300 Mobile Phone Cost Analysis

Main Cost Drivers Representing ~74% of total materials cost as follows :

Baseband / RF

Marvell - PXA905A0C312 - Communication Processor, Intel XScale, ARM-Compliant, 312MHz

Freescale ?MMM6000 RF Transceiver - ZIF, Quad-Band, GSM/GPRS/EDGE, w/ Integrated LNAs & VCOs

Displays

Display Module - 2.8' Diagonal, 65K Color TFT, 240 x 320 Pixels

Camera Module

Camera Module - ST Microelectronics - VS6724 - 2.0MP CMOS, 1/3.8' Format - Fixed Lens

Memory

Intel - xx4470LLYBB0 - MCP - 512Mb NOR Flash, 256Mb Mobile SDRAM

Battery

RIM - C-S2 - Li-Ion Polymer, 3.7V, 1100mAh

Other Items

Main PCB - 8-Layer - FR4/RCF HDI, 2+4+2

Enclosure, Main, Battery Cover

Charger - Philong - PSM04A-050RIM - 5.0V, 750mA

CSR - BC41B143A - BlueCore4ROM - Single Chip Bluetooth Solution, V2.0+EDR

TI - TLV320AIC33ICQE - Audio Codec

TI - TPS65820RSH - Power Management & Li-Ion Charger

Freescale - MMM6037 - PAM - Quad-Band, GSM/GPRS/EDGE, w/ Integrated Antenna Switch

Keypad Assembly

Display Window

Materials and Manufacturing ~$103.2

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 / EMS provider

Based on markings, the Blackberry Curve 8300 Pearl we received was labeled as Made in Mexico. We further assume that PCBs were also populated in Mexico, and that custom mechanicals (plastics and metals) were also sourced domestically in Mexico due to low labor rate.

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 Bluetooth modules or camera modules), 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 Blackberry Curve 8300 is a fairly straightforward and integrated design that does not make use of sub (daughter) PCBs, such as interconnect PCBs, or keypad PCBs, and does not have a lot of extra features (secondary camera, sliding feature, secondary displays, etc.) which keep this design relatively simple from a component count and manufacturing point of view.

With a component count of 638 components, of which 109 components are discrete mechanical components, it is inline with other similar candybar smart phones we have analyzed.

The number of mechanical components usually is a direct driver of hand-assembly costs, whereas the electronic component count (and I/O count, density, etc.) are relative metrics for the more automated portion (namely SMT assembly) of manufacturing costs.

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

Although different in the details, this deisgn, electronically is similar to the Blackberry 8100 model previously analyzed in Q4 06 (Intel PXA processor, TI Power management and CSR Bluetooth IC). In the newer 8300, the core chip is a 312MHz Marvell PXA905 communication processor which appears to handle all digital baseband and applications processing. As in the Pearl 8100, it features the same TI power / battery management IC, and CSR BlueCore4 Bluetooth chip. The RF/PA section also has the same supplier, Freescale. However, only the RF Transceiver (MMM6000) is the same as in the Pearl 8100. The PAM is a MMM6037 which seems to be a newer version of the MMM6027 seen in the Pearl 8100.

Usually for smartphones, we would expect a separate applications processor other than the baseband chip. In this design, the PXA processor handles all the DBB and application processing which makes this design straightforward and well-integrated.

Here is a summary of the major components used in the Blackberry Curve 8300 design:

Main PCB Baseband

Baseband - Marvell Technology - PXA905A0C312 - Communication Processor, Intel XScale ARM-Compliant, 312 MHz, w/ Integrated SRAM and Flash

Battery / Power Management

Power Management IC - Texas Instruments - TPS65820RSH - Power Management & Li-ion Charger

Memory

MCP - Intel xx4470LLYBB0 - 512Mb NOR Flash, 256Mb Mobile SDRAM

RF/PA

RF Transceiver - Freescale - MMM6000 - ZIF, Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, w/ Integrated LNAs & VCOs

PAM - Freescale - MMM6037 - Quad-Band, GSM/GPRS/EDGE, w/ Integrated Antenna Switch

User Interface

Bluetooth - CSR - BC41B143A - BlueCore4ROM V2.0+EDR

Camera Module

Camera Module - ST Microelectronics - VS6724 ?2.0 MP, CMOS, 1/3.8' Format

Image Sensor - 2.0MP, 2.2 um x 2.2 um Pixel Size, 3.50mm x 2.60mm Active Image Area

Display Module

2.5' Diagonal, 65K Color TFT, 240 x 320 Pixels

Blackberry Curve 8300 Mobile Phone - Box Contents