LG KF700 Mobile Phone Teardown

Overview / Main Features

The LG KF700 is billed as a combination handset with a 3-inch touch screen and a slide out conventional alphanumeric keypad. This compromise design helps ease users new to touch navigation with an array of legacy input designs. Further, LG included a jog dial navigation system that helps with application selection and other high level user interface functionality. On the touch screen, the KF700 has a rudimentary touch user interface which is arguably the least sophisticated between the 5 touch screen handsets in comparison.

From a mobile phone perspective, the single-band UMTS / tri-band GSM handset appears to be geared towards the European and Asian markets with is 2100MHz 3G radio. The KF700 features a 3.2 MP auto focus camera with LED flash and expandable memory via microSD media. Prominently, missing are higher-end features such as integrated WLAN module and aGPS making the KF700 more of a feature phone with a large touch screen rather than an Apple iPhone competitor.

LG KF700 Mobile Phone Main Image

High-end mobile phone consumers

Released

Per press releases, first release in Europe on March 2008.

LG KF700 Mobile Phone - Main PCB Top

Volume Estimations

For the purposes of this teardown analysis, we have assumed a lifetime production volume of 1.2M units.

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.

LG KF700 Mobile Phone - Main PCB Bottom

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.

iSuppli estimates unit shipments of 105 million HSDPA handsets in 2008 global market. We further estimate 111 million units of 3 megapixel camera phones to ship in the 2008 global market. All estimates are based on a 2 year product life span assumption with an overall global market share of 7% for LG.

Top Cost Drivers (Representing ~68% of Direct Materials Costs)

Qualcomm - MSM6280 - Baseband Processor - Single Chip, Quad-Band GSM/EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps & Bluetooth, 65nm

LG Innotek - IM300SBN1A_V05 - Display Module - 3.0' Diagonal, 262K Color TFT, 480 x 240 Pixels

Primary Camera Module - 3.2MP, 1/3.2' Format, Auto Focus Lens

Touchscreen Overlay - Dual Layer Clear Lexan Polycarbonate Sheet and 1 Layer Clear Polycarbonate Sheet, 4-Wire Resistive, Silkscreened, w/ Flex PCB

Toshiba Semiconductor - TYA000B800C0GG - MCP - 2Gb NAND Flash + 1Gb Mobile SDRAM

Secondary Camera Module - VGA, CMOS, 1/7.4' Format, Fixed Lens

Battery - Li-Ion, 3.7V, 900mAh

Mtekvision - MV9319 - Image Processor - 5MegaPixel, w/ Real-Time Image Compression & High Speed Serial Interface

Qualcomm - RTR6275 - RF Transceiver - ZIF, Quad-Band GSM/EDGE Transceiver, Dual Band UMTS Transmitter, Single Band UMTS Receiver

Qualcomm - PM6650 - Power Management IC - w/ Integrated USB Transceiver

Materials and Manufacturing $113.83

LG KF700 Mobile Phone 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.

LG KF700 Mobile Phone - Enclosure Disassembly

OEM/ODM/EMS Relationships / Manufacturing

According to iSuppli's "Global OEM Manufacturing and Design Analysis - Mobile Handsets Q1 2008, LG's manufacturing profile is mostly an in-house operation with about 6% of their volume outsourced. This represents a near doubling of outsourced production activity for the company since 2006 which splits fairly even between Arima and Flextronics. Like most of the top handset manufacturers, LG utilizes EMS partners to produce the low end handsets while keeping mid to high tier handset production close to home.

Country of Origin / Volume Assumptions

Based on markings, the unit was assembled in Korea. Furthermore, we have assumed that custom mechanicals (plastics, metals, etc.) were also sourced in Korea.

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 display module), 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 pin-count of the device. This calculation is affected by country or region of origin as well.

Design for Manufacturing / Device Complexity

The LG KF700 has an overall component count of 669 (excluding box contents), of which, 170 are mechanical in nature. Compared to other handsets within this competitive set which had component counts of over 1000 parts, the LG KF 700 is the least complex. This metric appears consistent with the number of features the KF700 offers in comparison to the other more fully-featured smartphones.

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 Korea.

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 LG KF700 features a Qualcomm MSM6280 design which we have previously seen used within the LG KS20 and HTC handsets. The MSM6280 handles both the core baseband functionalities as well as higher level applications processing. Supporting this chipset is a compliment of Qualcomm power management and RF Transceiver solutions (PM6650 & RTR6275).

The KF700 features a 3 inch primary display with 480 x 240 resolution and 262K colors. The integrated 4-wire resistive touchscreen represents a newer generation of the resistive touch panel technology. Also the build and quality of the touch surface has improve to closely mimic those on glass capacitive touch panels.

Here is a summary of the major components used in the LG KF700 design:

Main PCB

Baseband

• Baseband Processor - Qualcomm - MSM6280

Memory

• MCP - Toshiba Semiconductor - TYA000B800C0GG

Battery / Power Management

• Power Management IC - Qualcomm - PM6650

User Interface

• Image Processor - Mtekvision - MV9319

RF Receiver

• RF Transceiver - Qualcomm - RTR6275

PA

• PAM - Skyworks - SKY77329-15

Display

• Display Module - LG Innotek - IM300SBN1A_V05

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LG KF700 Mobile Phone - Box Contents