14 DAY TRIAL // Nexus One by HTC is the latest mobile phone unveiled to the world with Google's Android operating system on board, and it is also the first device to be sold directly by Google via its web store. The phone in itself might not be a technological breakthrough, but it comes with the latest flavor of the Android OS, namely 2.1, and the fact that it is being sold by Google opens a new door towards the marketing of handsets. Google has the phone available unsubsidized for $529, yet one can also purchase it with a two-year service contract from T-Mobile USA for $179.
According to a recently published report from iSuppli, the Nexus One comes to the market as a conglomerate of smartphone technologies. The device is one of the best phones on the market, and features a competitive pricing as well, states the research firm, which has just performed a tear down of the smartphone, and delivered its analysis on the manufacturing cost of Nexus One.
A preliminary estimate from iSuppli’s Teardown Analysis Team shows that the Bill Of Materials (BOM) for Nexus One by HTC rises up to $174.15. However, only the hardware and component costs for the device have been taken into consideration in this analysis, though there are other expenses that add to the total cost of the device, including those related to manufacturing, software, box contents, accessories and royalties, iSuppli notes.
The Nexus One is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon baseband processor that runs at 1GHz, this being the most expensive component of the device. Second on the costs list comes the handset's 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen display, followed by the memory inside Nexus One, comprised from 4Gbit (512MByte) of Samsung Semiconductor’s Double Data Rate (DDR) DRAM and 4Gbit of internal NAND flash memory. The shot attached to this article provides all the necessary details on the components' cost for the device.
“With the Nexus One, Google has taken the most advanced features seen in recent smart phone designs and wrapped them up into a single sleek design,” said Kevin Keller, senior analyst, Competitive Analysis, for iSuppli. “Items like the durable unibody construction, the blazingly fast Snapdragon baseband processor and the bright and sharp Active-Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AM-OLED) display all have been seen in previous phones, but never before combined into a single design. This gives the Nexus One the most advanced features of any smart phone ever dissected by iSuppli’s Teardown Analysis Service-a remarkable feat given the product’s BOM is similar to comparable products introduced during the past year.”
