Doro NeoBio 20 DECT Cordless Phone Teardown

Main Features / Overview

Doro, a company based in Sweden, designs and markets various consumer electronics products, including cordless and corded phone systems, IP telephones, walkie-talkies and various other warless and consumer products focused on the European market. They also appear to have a low end GSM phone marketed for use to youth and elderly (similar to Jitterbug and Firefly in the US).

The Doro NeoBio 20 (and 20 +1 which is the NeoBio 20 with an extra handset and base) is a cordless DECT-based phone system for home or office landline use. The product is one of 20 different cordless phonesets sold by Doro, but it appears that the most basic cordless phones from Doro start with low model numbers (the NeoBio 10 being the starting point), and seem to go up in terms of product selling price and feature set, making the NeoBios 10, 15r and 20 presumably towards the low end of their product offering.

The NeoBio's features are basic and conventional for a cordless phone system - see the feature list for a complete list of features.

DECT phone designs tend towards the simple - and this phone certainly fits that bill. The core electronics really revolves around just 3 chips all of which seem to be from DSP group. This makes the designs, from an electronic design perspective at least, quite low-end, inexpensive and low cost to manufacture, especially in China.

In fact, Doro's primary 'added-value' in this supply chain is probably mostly in the industrial design of the outer 'skins' of the devices, and indeed Doro seems to be most focused on selling the 'style' of their products.

Doro NeoBio 20 DECT Cordless Phone Main Image

European and Australian mainstream consumers.

Released

Q3 (Sept) 2007 per press release.

Pricing and Availability

Doro NeoBio products (the NeoBio 10 namely) start at 19.99, per web releases. This particular model (NeoBio 20) was found, at the time of writing for 24.99 at one UK e-tailer. The 'twin' or "+1 version with the second handset was retailing for 39.99 at the same establishment. The NeoBio 10 with extra handset also retails for 34.99.

Availability - throughout much of Europe or specifically in the following countries primarily: Denmark, Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom, Sweden. Australia also is on Doro's bill of countries with specific marketing operations.

Volume Estimations

Because of a high degree of component communality between the NeoBio 10, 10+1, 20 and 20+1 models, determining relative production volumes is a little trickier than usual, because we almost try to determine a rational relationship between model sales volumes, and production volumes of specific subsystems (docking stations vs. handset, for example). For the purposes of this teardown, we estimate unit shipments for the Doro NeoBio 10 and 20 over the course of a 2-year production lifetime would be on an order of magnitude as follows:

Primary Docking Station (Common to both NeoBio 10 and 20 models): 1 million units/ea

Handsets (very minor differences between models 10 and 20 - same plastics): 1 million units/ea

Secondary Docking Stations (Sold only in the ""+1" versions of the NeoBio 10 and 20): 1 million units/ea

As a reminder, volume production assumptions are not meant to be necessarily 'model 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).

Function / Performance

No testing was performed on this unit.

Doro NeoBio 20 DECT Cordless Phone Cost Analysis

We have assumed that all electronic component pricing is extremely competitive and purchased in China at tier 1 pricing. We have also assumed that the PCBA integrator / manufacturer is not a tier 1 EMS provider and that they are producing in more rural areas of China taking advantage of rock-bottom labor and fixed costs in those areas and have applied labor rate lower than typically applied to other projects assumed to be built by a tier 1 EMS provider.

The big cost drivers in these units, more than the electronics, however, are the enclosure elements, the plastics and other mechanical components, as can be seen in the numbers driving our analysis.

Main Cost Drivers - Highlights :

Electronic Cost Drivers

DSP Group Chipset (1 chipset per each handset and each ""Base Unit")

• Baseband Chip (Bare die Chip-On-Board)
• RF Transceiver
• Power Amplifier

Mechanical Cost Drivers

• Handset (per unit) - Mechanical Components
• Base Unit - Mechanical Components
• Charging Unit - Mechanical Components

Totals with Manufacturing by Subsystem

Handset (1 unit in 20, 2 in 20+1) $13.24 (1 handset)

Base Unit (1 unit in 20 and 20 + 1)

Charging Station (0 units in 20, 1 in 20 + 1)

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

EMS Provider or ODM relationship

It is assumed in this analysis that Doro are likely working with a Chinese ODM to produce these phones, however we do not know the nature of this relationship or who might be partnering with Doro.

Country of Origin / EMS Provider

This product was not labeled country of origin. We have, however, made the assumption that final assembly is taking place in China. Furthermore we have assumed that for this model, that PCB was populated in China, and that custom mechanicals (plastics and metals) were also sourced locally as well in China to leverage the lowest possible Regional production costs.

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

Overall, the Doro NeoBio 20 handset alone has a total component count of 222 components per handset, of which only 25 are mechanical in nature. We don't have other DECT phones against which to compare these component counts, but when compared with, for example, very low-end GSM handsets, the Doro NeoBio DECT phones are extremely simple.

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.

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

From an electronic design point, the only thing simpler than this design would be if the 3 integrated circuits which comprise the DECT phones functionality were totally integrated in a single device, but given the age of the technology, there is no investment impetus from a semiconductor manufacturer's point of view to try and do this, so this design basically has only 3 chips in each base and handset, these same chips are repeated in NeoBio 10, with only minor differences in the core controller / baseband chip:

1) Core baseband / microcontroller circuit

2) RF transceiver - DECT

3) Power Amplifier - DECT

Major components:

Baseband

The baseband chip in the docking stations is marked different and has slightly different die dimensions

• Handset - DSP Group - 30310-0P-100 - ASIC - DECT Baseband Chip
• Docking Station - DSP Group - 30311-0P-100 - ASIC - DECT Baseband Chip

RF/PA

These two devices are found in both NeoBio 10 and 20 products, with exact pairs in both handsets and docking stations.

• DSP Group - DE19RF16 - RF Transceiver
• DSP Group - DE19PA16 - RF Power Amplifier

Memory

The following device is the same used in all NeoBio 10 and 20 handsets and docking stations

• EEPROM - ISSI - IS24C16A-2GLI - 16Kb, 2-Wire, Serial

Display Module

This display is common to all Doro NeoBio 10 and 20 handsets.

• 1.5' Diagonal, Monochrome semi-custom (partial segment, partial icon) LCD screen - no onboard drivers

"

Doro NeoBio 20 DECT Cordless Phone - Box Contents