Motorola V360 Mobile Phone Teardown

Main Features

Mid-range clamshell camphone (VGA - no flash unit) tri-band GSM camera (w/EDGE), 1.8 Inch TFT display (176x220K, 262K color - exceptional when compared with competing phones) color - monochrome secondary), Bluetooth and Trans-flash expansion slot.

Motorola V360 Mobile Phone Main Image

Overview

The Motorola V360 is a mid-range phone with few standout features (just Bluetooth, and has a trans-flash expansion slot), but otherwise it is a fairly average mid-range clamshell phone with a lot of similarity to other mid-range Motorola phones.

Motorola V360 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 Motorola's own press release "'The Motorola V360 is a handset with broad appeal, filling the demand for a flip phone that provides a cutting-edge communication and entertainment experience, said Wayne White, vice president of sales for Motorola, Mobile Devices. 'This handset supports Motorola's vision of bringing consumers the best in quality and functionality." Translation: mainstream phone - no specific target niche like 'youth'.

Released

Original Motorola Press Release (pre-phone release?) at CeBIT, March 12, 2005, evidence of other pre-relese information from as early as February 2005. Official company press release - Nov 9, 2005 - kicking off product release with T-Mobile announcement.

Availability

Appears, per the Motorola website and press release, to be available currently through T-Mobile in the US and possibly in Europe (no evidence of this from T-Mobile Germany). Cannot find other evidence at this time of this phone being offered by other carriers.

Volume Estimations

We are using the estimate of 6 M units for lifetime production.

Market Shares / Sector Performance

We estimate that Motorola had an average market share in 2005 (based on global unit volumes for the first 3 quarters of 2005), of nearly 18%, up 3% in share from their 2004 average, per iSuppli estimates. One big chunk of share can be attributed to the enormously successful Motorola RAZR, with it's phenomenal production volumes.

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 Motorola'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 Motorola's shipments for EDGE enabled phones (tri and quad band combined) to be approximately 12M units in 2005, decreasing to 46M units in 2006.

Motorola V360 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. The Motorola further distinguishes itself by giving up higher end memory content (NAND flash content) in exchange for an expansion slot and a higher end primary display.

Main Cost Drivers Representing ~58% of total materials costs:

Primary / Secondary Displays*

MCP - Flash 256Mb, SRAM 64Mb

DBB/ABB Chipset

Multimedia Processor (ATI IMAGEON 2240)

Bluetooth Module

Camera Module

* 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 Motorola V360 was produced in China, per the manufacturing label on the phone. 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 Asian manufacturers 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 626, the Motorola V360, has the highest 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.

From a mechanical perspective, at 132 components it is also the most complex phone in this group of similar phones, as well as other Motorola flip phones (RAZR - 126 mechanicals, V300/v525 - 126/129 mechanicals, etc.), 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 and ABB chipset are from (surprise!) Freescale. In fact, with the exception of the C115 and E360 (ODM phone) - all Motorolas analyzed to date are based on Freescale DBB chips, however, the ABB chips are a fairly well-mixed bag of Freescale and TI chips from model to model. The DBB chip and ABB chip, however, are first-timers for us.

The PA is a model we haven't previously seen, however the RF2722 and RF6003 receiver and synthesizer chips were used in the recently analyzed V635 model from Motorola.

The Bluetooth solution used here seems to be their standard Class I solution - however, unlike in the RAZR, the module used here seems to be a little more primitive and lower cost (the RAZR featured a Murata module with the same Broadcom core chip, but slightly different surrounding components). Furthermore, the usage of ATI multimedia processors seems fairly universal in Motorola phones, where applicable. This particular model has not been seen before.

The usage of the single 256Mb NOR flash / 64Mb SRAM (or PSRAM) MCP is fairly common and we have seen this in several Motorola and SonyEricsson models.

Baseband

• DBB - Digital Baseband Processor - Freescale - SC29343VKP
• ABB - Analog Baseband / Power Management - Freescale - MC13890

Memory

• Intel MCP - RD38F4050L0YBQ0 - Flash 256Mb, SRAM 64Mb

PA/RF

• PAM - RF Micro Devices - RF3186 - Quad-Band 850/900/1800/1900MHz
• RF Receiver - RF Micro Devices - RF2722 - Quad-Band, ZIF, GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• RF Synthesizer - RF Micro Devices - RF6003 - RF Synthesizer w/ Modulator & Signal Processor

User-Interface

• Bluetooth - Broadcom - BCM2035KWB - Bluetooth Baseband - Single Chip HCI Solution
• Multimedia Processor - ATI - IMAGEON 2240

Camera

• CMOS (assumed) VGA camera module - Altus Technology

Display

• Primary: 1.9 Inch, Transflective (Assumed) TFT 176x220 262K Color
• Secondary: 1.2 Inch, Monochrome

"

Motorola V360 Mobile Phone - Phone - Bottom View w/ Cover Removed