In "product teardown," as practiced by the TechInsights product teardown group (which was known in the industry as Portelligent), technical staff analyze consumer electronic products by systematically disassembling them and recording the process. Each product teardown results in a detailed "product teardown report" that provides data on system architecture, component technology choices, performance metrics, bill-of-materials, and estimated manufacturing costs, all delivered in a highly digestible and graphics-rich format. In analyzing electronic products, TechInsights takes a "system-level view."
In its product teardown work, TechInsights covers such product categories as cellular handsets, digital cameras, portable multimedia players, portable navigation devices, ultra-mobile personal computers (UMPCs), game machines, wireless communications cards and dongles, and the various elements that make up the digital home, including flat panel televisions.
View the TechInsights product teardown service as a wide-angle lens on the personal electronics landscape. We don't replace the in-house expertise and insight of our customers in system analysis, but rather amplify their capabilities and knowledge. The quantitative and qualitative data in TechInsights’ product teardown reports, as well as cross-cutting trend studies and databases, let customers answer business-critical questions:
- What enabling electronics technologies are being developed and how will they affect end-products?
- How are my competitors designing with new technologies?
- How does my company compare when benchmarked against competitors?
- What technology opportunities are implied from trends in product implementation?
- How will the product features that users want affect our future design decisions and technology selections?
TechInsights' "Full Product Teardown Report" is our most detailed level of product teardown analysis, averaging over 100 pages in its in-depth coverage of a single cellular handset, for example. We have three distinct types of "Chipography Reports," which cover a broader spectrum of products with somewhat less detail, but nevertheless provide a full accounting of the semiconductor content of the target products.
TechInsights occasionally issues "Quick-Turn Teardowns," which take a broad-brush approach to providing our customers with insights into design trends in pace-setting consumer electronic products. TechInsights also makes regular contributions to the "Under the Hood" column in EE Times and Tech Online – one element of our product teardown work that is broadly available to the electronics industry.
TechInsights chooses products that set the pace in innovation along some dimension of importance in consumer electronics. These "dimensions of innovation" include form factor, feature set, price point, and component technologies.
In the product categories that TechInsights surveys, the products tend to represent the leading edge at the time of product selection.
The consumer electronics products that TechInsights analyzes are all available in the commercial marketplace.
Yes, we solicit and regularly receive suggestions on products for teardown from TechInsights' customers. We also do some projects that we call "sponsored teardowns" for customer companies that require analysis of particular target products.
Cost modeling is tricky business. TechInsights’ philosophy in cost modeling is to emphasize consistency across products and comparability over time, rather than to track short-term marketplace fluctuations. We use models driven by the key technical parameters of ICs and components to generate estimates of costs at the OEM (product maker) level. Our estimation process decomposes overall system cost into three major categories: Electronics, Mechanicals, and Final Assembly. The three major categories for system cost contributors are further broken down into the subcategories of ICs, other electronics parts, displays (as appropriate), printed circuit boards, electronics assembly, mechanical/housing elements, and final assembly. We believe our cost estimates generally fall within approximately 15 percent of the "right answer," which itself can vary depending on market and OEM-specific factors.
Most TechInsights product teardown reports and data files are for internal use only within the customer company. Depending on the type of "Channel License" a customer firm has in place with TechInsights, this internal usage may be broad, or it may be specific to a small group of users
As TechInsights performs product teardown analysis on individual consumer electronic products, we capture the data and measurements we collect into the "Product Profile Database." The Product Profile Database now contains data on over 820 products, as well as over 22,500 individual ICs, that TechInsights has analyzed during more than seven years of product teardown work.
TechInsights Key Metrics Reports provide customers with a highly visual way to view data elements (such as, for example, silicon die area, or total component count) across the hundreds of cellular handsets that TechInsights has analyzed over the years. The Key Metrics Reports are accessed via the Channel Listing Pages for the Cellular Phones Channel and Chipography Reports Channel on the TechInsights Web site.
Cellular Phones Channel
Chipography Reports Channel
TechInsights Database Extracts are subsets of our master Product Profile Database of product teardown data. As one information offering, TechInsights licenses Database Extracts to customers. The data sets are delivered through our Data Analysis Service, using Excel pivot-tables so that customers can navigate the data and formulate views based upon their own criteria.
For more information about Database Extracts, please visit the Data Analysis Page on the TechInsights Web site.
TechInsights Database Access Tools are Web-based search-and-retrieval tools that permit customers to perform their own searches on the Product Profile Database. Each tool is designed to answer a specific question: The IC Locator, for example, answers the question "In which products has TechInsights seen this IC?"
For more information about the Data Tools, please visit the Data Tools Page on the TechInsights Web site.
The TechInsights Data Analysis Service conducts studies and provides forecasts of key product and technology trends in the wireless and semiconductor sectors, based on the wealth of information in TechInsights’ Product Profile Database. The Data Analysis Service can also generate Database Extracts and other data sets that are designed to address the information requirements of individual customers.
For more information about the Data Analysis Service, please visit the Data Analysis Page on the TechInsights Web site.
TechInsights STARs (Strategic Trend Analysis Reports) examine key product and technology trends in the wireless and semiconductor sectors, using the information in the TechInsights Product Profile Database and proprietary market-segmentation models. TechInsight's Data Analysis Service produces the STARs.
Recent TechInsights STARs include:
For more information about STARs, please visit the Data Analysis Page on the TechInsights product teardown Web-site (www.teardown.com).
The TechInsights TechAlert Service (TAS) monitors the Asian trade press and reports on key developments in the electronics industry in a brief, e-mail based format. RSS feeds are also available.
TechInsight's TAS feeds on Wireless Technologies and Services and on Component Technologies are available to those who hold TechInsights Channel Licenses. The "Competitive Alert" TAS feed is available to both customers and industry contacts.
For a complimentary subscription to Competitive Alert TAS, please visit the Tech Alert Service Page on the TechInsights product teardown Web-site (www.teardown.com).
TechInsights Tech Perspectives are occasional reports that we provide to our Channel Licensees. The Tech Perspectives include analyses and commentaries on key technology trends in the electronics industry sectors we cover; analyses and commentaries on important market developments, with an emphasis on northern Asia; coverage of tradeshows that we have attended; and copies of workshop and conference presentations made by TechInsights technical staff.
Tech Perspectives are available to current TechInsights Channel Licensees without incremental charges.
For a listing of recent Tech Perspectives, please visit the Tech Perspectives Page on the TechInsights product teardown Web-site (www.teardown.com).
Yes, some percentage of TechInsights’ product teardown projects are performed under contract with individual customers. We call these projects "sponsored teardowns."
If you are interested in the possibility of having TechInsights perform some sponsored teardown analyses of particular consumer electronic products, please call us at 1-512-338-3600, or send an e-mail to teardown@ubmtechinsights.com, to initiate a discussion of your requirements.
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