A similar cost with that of other high-end devices

Jan 15, 2010 11:20 GMT  ·  By

iSuppli Corp.’s Teardown Analysis Service has announced that they have torn the Motorola DROID to pieces, and that the device sports a $187.75 Bill of Materials (BOM) and manufacturing cost. According to the report they published, the hardware components of Motorola DROID cost $179.11, while the manufacturing cost is of only $8.64. However, iSuppli also notes that the report only focuses on the cost of the materials and manufacturing, and that expenses related to software and royalties have not been taken into consideration. What the report also unveils is the fact that DROID comes with a similar component cost as other high end devices, including the iPhone 3GS or Nexus One.

“Motorola has pinned all its hopes on one little Droid,” said Andrew Rassweiler, director and principal analyst, Teardown Services, for iSuppli. “Indeed, the Droid is a critical product for Motorola, which has suffered from dwindling market share and declining market relevancy over the past few years. The last hit phone for Motorola was the RAZR, launched in 2003. Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, multiple companies have found some success by offering competing smart phones, including Palm, HTC, Samsung and LG. For Motorola, the Droid represents an attempt to get on the comeback trail with a competitive smart-phone product.”

The research firm says that, during the past three years, Motorola lost a lot of market share in the mobile phone segment, reaching 5.4 percent of worldwide unit shipments in Q2 2009, down from 22.5 percent during the same time frame in 2006. At the same time, Motorola also lost a few positions on the handset market, dropping from the second place in the first quarter of 2007 all the way to the fifth position in the third quarter of the last year. However, the launch of DROID might represent the company's salvation, as it is aimed at addressing some of the shortcomings Apple's iPhone comes to the market with.

When referring to the component costs of Motorola DROID, iSuppli says that the most expensive single component of the device is the MicroSD memory card, which comes in at $35. However, the most expensive integrated component of the phone is said to be its display, which costs $17.75, while the capacitive touch screen/overlay hits the second place with a cost of $17.50. Next in line comes the 5-megapixel CMOS sensor, priced at $14.25, followed by the Qualcomm baseband processor/radio frequency chip inside the device, which costs $14.04, and by the Texas Instruments application processor, which is $12.90.

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Motorola DROID's materials and manufacturing said to cost $187.75
Motorola DROID cost of materials and manufacturing
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