Apple has argued on multiple occasions that Samsung builds mobile products that ”blatantly imitate the appearance of Apple’s products to capitalize on Apple’s success.” Courts seem to disagree for the most part, with only a pair of injunctions having been issued despite dozens of complaints Apple has filed around the world. There are some areas where Samsung does seem to take pages out of Apple’s playbook, however — Samsung’s new anti-iPhone ad strategy is somewhat reminiscent of Apple’s famous “I’m a Mac” campaign, for example — and market research firm Allied Business Intelligence may have uncovered another one this week. Read on for more.

ABI recently performed a teardown on Samsung’s latest flagship phone, the Galaxy Nexus, and the firm analyzed the components found within the handset. Among them was a new version of Samsung’s LTE chipset that is estimated to cost half as much as the chip it replaces.

“The Samsung Galaxy Nexus modem is constructed with the combination of a Via Telecom CDMA/EVDO Rev. A integrated circuit and a Samsung LTE baseband integrated circuit,” the firm wrote in its report. “This combination is now common for Samsung’s Verizon phones, but the Galaxy Nexus sports a new version of the LTE baseband chip. The new chip is estimated at nearly half the cost of the prior chip’s $23 price tag.”

One area where the competition has been unable to keep pace with Apple is profit, and the company’s record-setting holiday quarter was thanks largely in part to the huge margins it enjoys on iPhone sales. Asymco’s Horace Dediu estimates that Apple took in approximately 75% of mobile phone industry profits last quarter despite accounting for just 9% of global cell phone shipments, or an estimated 23.5% of all smartphone channel sales.

Whether or not Samsung’s mobile devices are “copycats” as Apple claims is up to the courts of the world to decide, but Samsung would be wise to follow Apple’s lead where margins are concerned. Samsung shipped about as many smartphones as Apple during the holiday quarter, but the $2.32 billion in operating profit it took in from its mobile business pales in comparison to Apple’s mobile profits.

Making significant cuts to component costs while still managing to sell 4G devices at premium prices could help the South Korea-based vendor hold its ground in the first quarter while the world awaits the launch of its next-generation flagship smartphone, the quad-core Galaxy S III.

The team at iFixit recently tore open Barnes & Noble’s brand new Nook Tablet to get a closer look at its inner workings see how they compare to Amazon’s Kindle Fire. The group found that the Nook Tablet is powered by a dual-core TI OMAP 4 processor clocked at 1GHz, and it has 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal SanDisk storage. It also has a 4,000 mAh battery under the hood that’s rated for up to 11.5 hours of reading time, 3.5 hours longer than the previous generation Nook Color device. The Nook Tablet received a repairability score of 6 out of 10 points, which is worse than the Kindle Fire’s 8/10 score. The LCD can be easily replaced because it isn’t fused to the bezel, however one would need to remove the motherboard in order to replace the battery, and there are “excessive amounts of adhesive” and even hidden screws that made the teardown a bit more tedious than usual.

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A recent teardown of Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablet reveals that the company is likely selling its new Android-powered slate at a loss. Market research and intelligence firm IHS iSuppli on Friday published its findings after disassembling the new Amazon Kindle Fire tablet and examining its components. Following its analysis, the firm determined that Amazon’s Build of Materials cost is $185.60, and its total cost including manufacturing-related fees is $201.70 per Kindle Fire. Prior to obtaining and disassembling the tablet, IHS had estimated its parts and manufacturing costs to be $209.63 per unit combined. Read on for more.

“The Kindle Fire, at a retail price point of $199, is sold at a loss by Amazon, just as the basic Kindle is also sold at a loss at the current $79 retail price point,” Andrew Rassweiler, senior director of teardown services for IHS, said in a statement. “Amazon makes its money not on Kindle hardware, but on the paid content and other products it plans to sell the consumer through the Kindle. This is a similar business model to wireless companies such as AT&T or Verizon. They sell you a phone that costs them $400 to $600 or more to make for a price of only $200. However, they expect to more than make up for that loss with a two-year service contract.”

IHS notes that its determination covers parts and manufacturing only, and does not take into account software, licensing, marketing, royalties and other related expenditures. The firm’s full press release follows below.

Amazon Kindle Fire Costs $201.70 to Manufacture

November 18, 2011
ANDREW RASSWEILER

Amazon’s Kindle Fire media tablet carries a BOM cost of $185.60, according to preliminary findings from the IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service. When manufacturing services expenses are added, the cost increases to $201.70, as shown in the table below.

This is slightly lower than the IHS virtual estimate of the Kindle’s cost issued in September of a BOM amounting to $191.65, and a total of $209.63, when factoring in the manufacturing and the margin expenses.

Please note that this teardown assessment is preliminary in nature, and accounts only for hardware costs and does not include additional expenses such as software, licensing, royalties or other expenditures.

“The Kindle Fire, at a retail price point of $199, is sold at a loss by Amazon, just as the basic Kindle is also sold at a loss at the current $79 retail price point,” said Andrew Rassweiler, senior director, teardown services for IHS. “Amazon makes its money not on Kindle hardware, but on the paid content and other products it plans to sell the consumer through the Kindle. This is a similar business model to wireless companies such as AT&T or Verizon. They sell you a phone that costs them $400 to $600 or more to make for a price of only $200. However, they expect to more than make up for that loss with a two-year service contract.”

Surprise design wins in the Kindle fire include the use of a touch screen control- integrated source from the previously unknown source Ilitek and a wireless local area network (WLAN) module from new supplier Jorjin.

The use of an unfamiliar source for the touch screen controller integrated circuit (IC) reflects the growing trend of new suppliers entering the market. Amid booming sales for touch screen devices, IC suppliers have jumped into the fray to satisfy the increase in demand. This trend toward employing lesser-known sources is evident in recent designs including the Vizio tablet, which featured a touch control IC from EETI—and the Lenovo A60 smartphone, which employed a touch control IC from FocalTech Systems.

The use of the Jorjin WLAN module also represents a surprise, given that most tablet designs employ more complex combo solutions from Broadcom or Texas Instruments. The Jorjin device provides a cheaper approach to implementing WLAN support, at just $4.50, yielding a $1 savings in BOM costs.

Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) dominates the Kindle Fire design. Most notably, TI contributes the applications processor, which provides the core functionality of the tablet. The TI OMAP4430 processor costs $14.65, accounting for 7.9 percent of the Kindle Fire’s total BOM. However, TI also supplies other devices, including the power management device and the audio codec. This gives TI a total of $24 per each Kindle, or 12.9 percent of the BOM.

TI’s OMAP4430 applications processor has been identified in an increasing number of designs dissected by the IHS, including Research In Motion’s PlayBook RDJ21WW tablet, as well as the Motorola Droid Bionic XT875 and LG Optimus 3D P920 smartphones. The OMAP4430 is a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9, 1GHz processor with a IVA 3 Hardware Accelerator and a SGX540 3D graphics core. The device supports 1080P 2-D and 720P 3-D graphics, and is produced using 45nm process geometry.

The single most expensive subsystem in the Kindle Fire is the display and touch screen, at a combined cost of $87.00, or 46.9 percent of the BOM. Amazon sources the display from two companies: LG Display and E Ink Holdings. The display uses E Ink’s FFS technology, which LG Display has licensed.

Improved production yields and efficiencies have assisted greatly in reducing the cost of FFS tablet displays. In the same vein, touch screens have made big strides in cost reduction during the course of 2011.

The Kindle Fire incorporates 8 gigabytes of eMMC NAND flash memory. In the individual Kindle Fire torn down by IHS iSuppli, the NAND flash was supplied by Samsung. The eMMC NAND flash is fairly popular with most manufacturers, as it includes memory management circuitry.

IHS had assumed originally that the Kindle Fire might have as much as 8 gigabits of low-power DDR2 DRAM memory. In fact, the Kindle Fire ships with only 4 gigabits. This shaved off a few dollars from our previous cost estimates. Elpida was the supplier of the DRAM in the individual Kindle Fire torn down by IHS iSuppli.

Together, the NAND and DRAM form a memory subsystem costing $22.10, or 11.9 percent of the total BOM.

The group at iFixit recently tore open the Amazon Kindle Fire to get a good look at its hardware. The group discovered that the device is powered by a Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 processor clocked at 1GHz that is paired with an older Texas Instruments WL1270B 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi chip. Overall, the Kindle Fire didn’t have too many complicated parts, which resulted in a solid 8/10 repairability score from iFixit. The team said its rear case is easy to take off, users only need a regular screw driver to open the tablet, and the LCD isn’t fused to its the glass cover, which means it should be fairly easy to replace if it breaks. Unfortunately, however, the glass pane is fused to the bezel, and it will require a heat gun to separate the components. A video from DirectFix, another site that tore apart the Kindle Fire and examined its innards, follows after the break.

 Read [iFixit] Read [YouTube]

The crew at iFixit has given the iPhone 4S its proper tear-down, revealing the phone’s inner workings and hardware. iFixit noticed that the battery offers an extra 0.5 WHrs over the one found in the iPhone 4, which is likely the reason Apple is able to advertise an additional 1-hour of 3G talk time on the iPhone 4S compared to its predecessor. The phone is equipped with a Qualcomm RTR8605 radio, an Avago ACPM-7181 power amplifier and of course a dual-core 1GHz Apple A5 processor, which has been downclocked to 800MHz. Be sure to hit the jump for a few more images of the iPhone 4S teardown. Deliveries of Apple’s new smartphone begin on Friday, and in the meantime be sure to check out our hands-on with the iPhone 4S.

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Apple is looking at another big-margin device launch next week when the tech giant’s fifth-generation iPhone finally hits store shelves on October 14th. Market research and intelligence firm UBM TechInsights on Wednesday estimated that Apple’s 32GB iPhone 4S carries a materials cost of $203 per handset for the Cupertino-based company. UBM arrived at that number by using component costs from its iPhone 4 teardown as a base and then making slight adjustments for known changes in iPhone 4S components, such as the new A5 processor. Apple’s Canadian website states that the MSRP for its iPhone 4S starts at $649 (CAD, though Apple’s pricing in Canada and the U.S. are aligned in most cases), so presuming the company will stay true to form and add $100 to the MSRP of the 32GB model, Apple is looking at a margin of roughly $546 when taking only build of materials (BOM) into account. After additional expenses, however, Apple still looks to have another solid money-maker on its hands. UBM TechInsights’ full press release follows below.

UBM TechInsights Commentary: Apple Maintains Profit Margin While Introducing Few Technology Changes

Extensive database of teardowns and trends analysis aid in the speculation of cost of the iPhone 4S

OTTAWA, Ontario, Oct. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — UBM TechInsights, leveraging its extensive library of teardowns and semiconductor analysis, has taken a closer look at the iPhone 4S announcement and is issuing an estimate of the cost of the phone.  When taking into account current market prices, the iPhone 4S will achieve the same healthy profit margin that they have experienced in previous iPhone launches.

“Technology-wise, you aren’t seeing anything revolutionary or unexpected from the iPhone 4S,” says Jeffrey Brown, Vice-President of Business Intelligence. “As we predicted in July, the iPhone 4S is a moderate improvement over the iPhone 4 – featuring an A5 processor that has been in use for approximately nine months, an image sensor that puts the handset on par with its competitors, and improved battery life.”

The introduction of the iPhone 4S across GSM and CDMA networks in a singular design was also alluded to in the introduction of the Verizon model of the iPhone 4.  ”When the CDMA version of the iPhone 4 was brought to market, it featured a Qualcomm baseband modem that was capable of working across both networks,” says Jeffrey Brown.  ”This was the single biggest indicator that Apple was moving towards a ‘world phone’ that would reduce design times and production costs.  We expect the new antenna design to be very similar to what we saw in the CDMA version of the iPhone 4.”

UBM TechInsights Vice-President of Technical Intelligence, David Carey, views today’s announcement of the iPhone 4S as par for the course for Apple.  ”Just as we saw a modest technology bump from the iPhone 3G to the iPhone 3GS, Apple is adopting the same model of iterative improvement and incrementalism as they gear up for the iPhone 5 platform.  By continuing down the hardware evolution path, more powerful and useful software such as natural voice-recognition, highly-rendered gameplay, wireless video mirroring, and complex image processing all become possible. The software experience – enabled by ‘good-enough’ hardware – is arguably what customers care about most in the end.”

Using previous costing history and estimates on the major components of the iPhone 4S, UBM TechInsights estimates the bill-of-materials to be in the same range at where the iPhone 4 model was at launch in mid-2010.  Using preliminary specs and cost analysis, we estimate the 32GB model of the iPhone 4S will have a BOM of $203 at launch.  This estimate includes an estimated cost of $26 for the Apple A5 processor and $31 for the retina display.

For more information on the costing of the iPhone 4S and how it compares in pricing in today’s market to the iPhone 4, please contact UBM TechInsights for a comparison table highlighting the costs of key components.  For more information on the iPhone 4 teardown visit: http://www.ubmtechinsights.com/teardowns/apple-iphone-4-teardown/

UBM TechInsights will be conducting a comprehensive teardown of the iPhone 4S, including detailed information on many of the key components and semiconductors and confirmation of our earlier costing estimates.  Visit www.ubmtechinsights.com on October 14th for the iPhone 4S teardown.

As part of its new Teardown Research Service, market research firm ABI Research has torn Samsung’s Galaxy S II apart in order to analyze and test the components Samsung used to build its latest flagship device. “If you are looking to keep up with the latest technology in 2011, the Galaxy S II is a good place to start,” ABI Research’s report states, listing the device’s major changes compared to the original Galaxy S as including the Exynos dual-core processor, a new single-packaged multi-band multi-mode radio from RFMD, a new CMOS-based antenna switch and a lower-power XMM6260 cellular chipset from Infineon. “Samsung started from scratch with this phone: almost every component is new,” ABI Research vice president of engineering James Mielke said in a statement. ”Its application processor is the most powerful on the market at present. It is the first to use the Samsung Exynos 4210 dual-core application processor (a competitor to NVIDIA’s dual-core Tegra 2). The name Exynos combines Greek words for ‘smart’ and ‘green,’ indicating Samsung’s energy-efficiency goals for the design.” Mielke concludes, ““Samsung took many risks by combining all these new technologies into one phone. But ABI Research believes those risks will pay off; the Galaxy S II sets a new benchmark for almost every category on which a smartphone is measured.”

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The crew over at iFixit — torx screw drivers in hand – just stripped down one of Apple’s brand new 21.5 inch Sandy Bridge iMacs to give us a look at its guts. There aren’t too many surprises in store: the computer uses the same LG display found in the last generation of iMacs, and iFixit was pleased to find that Apple used an appropriate amount of thermal paste on the CPU and GPU — a “happy departure from the gobs” Cupertino put on the new MacBook Pro. The RAM, hard drive, and optical drive can be swapped out easily, too; you’ll just have to remove the LCD in order to do so. iFixit gave the new iMac a 7 out of 10 “repairability score,” as most of the hardware was easy to access. The team’s biggest complaint was with the need to remove the logic board in order to clean the LCD after reassembling the computer. Hit the jump for a few more images of the teardown.

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The team over at iFixit spent the morning tearing down RIM’s brand new tablet for an in-depth look at the inner-workings of the BlackBerry PlayBook. There aren’t too many surprises, but the firm did discuss how difficult and costly it could be to replace broken parts. If you aren’t using a case for your PlayBook just yet, here’s one reason you might want to start:

“The front camera, rear camera, and top control buttons are all attached as one assembly, making the replacement of a broken power button or volume buttons very costly.”

iFixit also said that RIM chose to build a magnesium frame around the glass LCD display, which should give it some extra durability. If you do end up shattering that 7-inch front panel, it’s not the end of the world. The LCD isn’t fused to the glass, which means a replacement should be fairly easy on you, and your wallet. Hit the jump to see iFixit’s full gallery.

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Also listed on the battery is a capacity of 6930 mAh. Since mAh = Watt-hours / volts * 1000, converting using the above numbers yields 25 / 3.8 * 1000 = 6,579. It looks like there might be some rounding going on here, or the battery voltage might actually be more like 3.6 volts.

The iPad 2 Smart Cover tear-down revealed 21 magnets (in addition to the 10 magnets in the iPad 2 itself), a large metal plate encased in plastic, and two structural plates. Hit the jump for images of a heaping serving of hardware porn.

Read [iFixit iPad 2] Read [iFixit iPad 2 Smart Cover]

You know what is sitting inside the Nexus S, but have you seen it? If you’re one of those people who prefer to go eyes-on (pics or it didn’t happen) then listen up. The gang over at iFixit have given the newly released Samsung Nexus S a proper tear down. While no real surprises were found under the hood, the brood does offer this warning about the 1500mAh pack found in the device:

Don’t feed this battery to a baby.

Oh, humor. Hit the read link to check out the Nexus S… inside and out.

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We’ll be honest, seeing a shiny new gadget get taken down to the screws puts a huge smile on our faces… and why shouldn’t it? Two days after the Magic Trackpad was released by Apple, the gang over at ifixit has done a proper teardown of the device. Spoiler Alert: there were no magical gnomes or elves hiding inside the trackpad. If you still want to know more hit up the read link to see the trackpad takedown.

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We weren’t the only ones to get an iPhone 4 early — iFixIt just released one of their famous teardowns, and while nothing is really new, we do have confirmation on some of the bigger points:

• RAM is confirmed to be 512MB compared to 256MB in the iPad and iPhone 3GS
• The two screws on the bottom allow removal of the back glass plate, not the front LCD as with previous models
• The battery, while not user accessible, is easily replaceable — and huge!
• The entire from LCD assembly will require replacement if damaged. On earlier models people would buy either the LCD or digitizer separately and adhere them together, but with Apple’s new manufacturing process, this won’t really be possible
• The integration of cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth radios into the case assembly is “genius”. We agree

So, interested in checking out some more shots of the iPhone 4′s insides? Couple more photos after the jump, and hit iFixIt for the rest!

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Did you order yourself an Xbox 360 Slim? Do you have an innate desire to rip that sucker down to the frame once you get it? If so, AnandTech has got an article for you. The hardware analysis website has meticulously disassembled and documented the inner workings of the new Xbox 360 Slim. From power usage while idle and in gameplay to fan noise while idle and seeking, the tear-down and critique in this article is real candy for the gaming geek. It also contains some great spec comparisons between the original Xbox 360 and the its newer, svelter cousin. Hit the read link and check out the full article in all its glory.

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Slightly ahead of schedule, the folks at iFixit are back with another on of their famous teardowns, this time focusing on the HTC EVO 4G. Taking apart the Android Wunderkind proved to be a breeze, which is no doubt a good thing as it means any unfortunate soul that happens to damage their phone won’t have too hard of a time repairing it all by their self. There’s a whole wealth of photos and technical information about chipsets and industrial design that are sure to get your nerd juices a-flowin’, so hit up iFixit for the rest of the pics.

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