Cisco 7942G IP Phone Teardown

Overview / Main Features

The Cisco 7942G is a mid-level IP phone model offering from Cisco's premier Unified IP Phone 7900 series. The phone features a large 5 inch 4-bit grayscale graphical LCD screen with 320 x 222 pixel resolution. Typical of the 7900 series line, the 7942G has a full duplex speakerphone with echo cancellation. Further, the 7942G offers a "wideband audio enhancement on the physical handset unit. This wideband enhancement works in conjunction with the G.722 codec and Cisco Unified Communications Manager 4.1 to produce richer audio experience during calls. Overall, the 7942G shares the same form factor / enclosure design as the 7960 and 7970 lines.

Other features of the 7942G include 2-port Ethernet solution for LAN connectivity along with a co-located PC, a headset port for hands-free use, volume control toggle buttons, dedicated 'messages', 'directory', 'service' and 'settings' keys as well as 2 illuminated soft keys. The phone works as part of an integrated solution from Cisco - ""Cisco Unified Communication Solution" and is highly configurable and easily administered via LAN.

Cisco 7942G IP Phone Main Image

Enterprise, government agency, and institutional workspaces upgrading to or leveraging existing IP based telephony infrastructure.

Released

Release date / press releases not found.

Pricing and Availability

Pricing - Keeping in mind that this phone is unlikely to be purchased alone in a retail environment, but rather is sold more at an enterprise level as part of a larger package, it is difficult to say what a typical Cisco sales price may be in such a package for this unit. However, various units were found from e-tailers at the time of writing (July 2008) for prices in the $329.00 to $399.00 range.

Availability - Global availability (assumed)

Cisco 7942G IP Phone - Main PCB Top

Volume Estimations

For the purposes of this teardown analysis, we have assumed a lifetime production volume of 2.7M units over a product lifetime of 3 years.

This estimate is derived from high level forecast assumptions for the IP phone market as a whole, as well as Cisco's dominant market position in this sector.

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 increment by an order of magnitude. Minor changes in volume (say 1 million vs. 2) rarely have a large net effect on our final analysis.

Market / Sector Performance

IP Telephony is not an ongoing practice area for iSuppli, however per our own topical research in the area of VoIP (""VoIP Market: Maturity Approaches but New Opportunities Arise" - Q3 2007), we expect the VoIP market to be dominated by the enterprise segment (which accounted for 45% of the VoIP equipment revenue in 2007 and is expected to grow to 50% of the market for VoIP equipment.

Furthermore, as the installed base of PBX lines approaches 50% IP in 2009, iSuppli expects the rate of growth of IP lines to slow from its estimated 2007 rate of 17% to less than 10% growth by 2010.

iSuppli further estimates, that in 2007, Cisco had 17% revenue market share of the OEM Enterprise VoIP factory revenue.

Cisco 7942G IP Phone Cost Analysis

PHICO - Display Module Value Line Item - 5', Monochrome, 320 x 222 Pixels, 4-bit Grayscale, Screen Area: 108mm x 80mm

Texas Instruments (Cisco Systems) - F751916BZDW - Processor - IP Phone

6-Layer - FR4

Spansion - S29GL128P11TFI02 - Flash - NOR, 128Mb, 3V, 110ns, 90nm

Broadcom - BCM5912KQM - Ethernet Transceiver - Dual

Enclosure, Main, Rear - Injection Molded ABS

Front Faceplate - Injection Molded ABS, Silver Painted, Silkscreened

Enclosure, Main, Front - Injection Molded ABS

Loudspeaker Assembly - 1.5' Dia. Loudspeaker, 4 Ohm, 6W, w/ Insulated Wires & 2-Pin Connector

Samsung - K4H561638H-UCB3 - SDRAM - 256Mb (16M x 16), 166MHz, 2.5V

Pulse Engineering - H2075NL - Ethernet Magnetics Module - 10/100 Base-TX, VoIP

Rear Foot Stand - Injection Molded ABS

Keypad - Injection Molded Silicone Rubber, w/ Carbon Contact Pads

MWM Acoustics - Loudspeaker - Receiver, Dynamic, w/ 3 Integral Insulated Wires

Materials and Manufacturing $ 71.23

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

OEM/ODM/EMS Relationships / Manufacturing

All the Cisco IP phones analyzed so far are labeled as made in China. We are assuming that this comes from an EMS provider in China that Cisco outsources to, possibly such as Foxconn with whom Cisco have relationships for other equipment manufacturing.

Country of Origin / Volume Assumptions

Based on markings, the unit was assembled in China. Furthermore, we have assumed that custom mechanicals (plastics, metals, etc. were sourced 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 Bluetooth modules, tuners or hard drives), 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 total component count of this Cisco 7942G IP phone is 923 (not including box contents, accessories). This puts the 7942G in it's logical position at the top-end of the IP phones analyzed (Cisco 524G and 7931G). The total count of mechanical components is 133 - which again, falls in line with other competing Cisco models and at the top-end of the spectrum. Qualitatively speaking, the Cisco design is not inherently complex from an electronics perspective and consists primarily of a handful of core ICs - most electronic component counts are largely driven by low-level passive components, as is the case here. The 7942G compares rationally against competing models with less functionality and features.

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 most interesting thing about the Cisco IP phones that we have seen is the lack of design commonality between models, both from a mechanical perspective (enclosures, plastics, etc.), but equally surprisingly from an electronic design perspective. The bottom line is that we have now seen 4 different Cisco IP phones (including the older 7960G), and you would never know that they were designed and manufactured by the same company - 4 different phones, with similar looks and core functionality, but very limited design re-use.

Unlike Nokia, that clearly focus on cross-platform component re-usage and consistent internal design rules, these 3 Cisco IP phones and our previous 7960G analysis make it look like 4 different design teams created these IP phones at 4 very different points in time.

Though the differences in functionality are duly noted, it seems as though there is wasted design effort in this lack of consistency that is counter-productive to their ability to leverage their supply chain and costs. Even the handsets that we had presumed would be the one device re-used over and over again - proved to be internally different. It doesn't make sense when it seems that most of these IP phone designs could coalesce around a handful of standard design building blocks or common component elements - but such is rarely the case, save the standard connectors such as RJ45 jacks.

Overall - the Cisco 7942G design is like other IP phones seen - simple and revolves around a few core components - a central processor (a TI ASIC for VoIP applications), then normally some type of Ethernet interface IC (Broadcom dual Ethernet transceiver in this case), a few memory chips (DRAM and NOR Flash), then mostly much less noteworthy components.

Here is a summary of the major components used in the Cisco 7942G IP Phone design:

Processing

• VoIP ASIC - Texas Instruments (Cisco Systems) - F751916BZDW

LAN

• Dual Ethernet Transceiver - Broadcom - BCM5912KQM

Memory

• SDRAM - Samsung - K4H561638H-UCB3
• Flash (NOR) - Spansion - S29GL128P11TFI02

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Cisco 7942G IP Phone - Block Diagram