China: Entry-level dual core IPS WVGA (480×800) smartphones $65+ now, quad-core $70+ in June

China market: Qualcomm, Spreadtrum cutting quad-core processor prices [DIGITIMES, April 25, 2013]

Qualcomm and Spreadtrum Communications have both cut prices for their quad-core products to better compete against MediaTek, which controls half of the smartphone-chip market in China, according to industry sources.

Qualcomm recently quoted its quad-core solutions at less than US$10, slightly cheaper than MediaTek’s offerings, the sources indicated. Meanwhile, Spreadtrum has lowered its quad-core processor prices to similar levels. Both firms are trying to gain market share through aggressive pricing, the sources said.

Monthly shipments of MediaTek’s smartphone chips have topped 15 million units recently, and even approached the 20 million level, the sources revealed. The booming shipments already lifted MediaTek’s share of China’s smartphone-IC market to 50%, the sources said.

MediaTek’s quad-core solutions reportedly have attracted orders from Coolpad, Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE.

In other news, MediaTek has reported higher-than-expected sales for the first quarter of 2013. The firm has scheduled an investors meeting on May 6 to discuss its performance in the first quarter, and business outlook.

Remark: the inserted slides are from 1Q13 Investor Roadshow Presentation [Feb 26, 2013] from Spreadtrum

And as $48 Mogu M0 “peoplephone”, i.e. an Android smartphone for everybody to hit the Chinese market on November 15 [Nov 9, 2012]
now Mogu S2 went on sale today [China Smartphones, April 22, 2013]

A leader in the production of super cheap smart phones, the Chinese company Mogu, today held a preliminary sales of its new budget smartphone Mogu S2. The official price of the unit is 399 yuan, or about $65. Today, the sale was put on a limited batch of 5000 smartphones at the price of 299 yuan ($48).

Mogu S2 is running the 2-core processor with a clock speed of 1.2 Ghz, and used 4-inch screen with a resolution of WVGA [480x800] to display the information. In addition there is 512 MB RAM, 4GB of ROM and a 5-megapixel camera. A nice addition is its support for two SIM cards, modules, WIFI, Bluetooth, and GPS. The operating system is installed MOGO OS (Android 2.3 Gingerbread).

Additional key information from the company’s product page [MOGU蘑菇手机, April 20, 2013]: i.e. IPS display and the Spreadtrum SC8825 or SC6825 SoC

We’ve seen the effect of the earlier SC6820 SoC leading to Temporary Nokia setback in India [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 28, 2013]. This is how Spreadtrum presented this situtation recently:

The two new SoCs are the same to the maximum as SC8825 has only the following additional functionality:

TD-SCDMA standards (3GPP R7), 2010~2025MHz / 1880~1920MHz/2300~2400MHz

and prospects for that additional functionality (internal to China) were presented as exceptionally bright by the company: 

Spreadtrum Announces Commercial Launch of Dual-Core Smartphone Chipsets for TD-SCDMA and EDGE [press release, April 2, 2013]

SC8825 (TD-SCDMA) and SC6825 (EDGE) set new standard for dual-core smartphone chipset cost and performance with high level of integration, standout graphics performance and best-in-class TD-SCDMA technology

Spreadtrum Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPRD; “Spreadtrum” or the “Company”), a leading fabless semiconductor provider inChina with advanced technology in 2G, 3G and 4G wireless communications standards, today announced the commercial availability of its dual-core 1.2GHz smartphone chipsets for TD-SCDMA (SC8825) and EDGE (SC6825), following the successful qualification of its platform by China Mobile.

“With our new dual-core chipsets, Spreadtrum has leveraged our expertise in system design to deliver the lowest-cost dual-core platform in combination with high end graphics performance for the TD-SCDMA and EDGE markets,” said Dr. Leo Li, chairman and CEO of Spreadtrum. “This combination of low-cost architecture, standout graphics performance, and best-in-class TD-SCDMA technology provides smartphone designers with unprecedented value in bringing high end features to low-cost devices.”

Spreadtrum’s SC8825, which supports dual-mode TD-SCDMA/HSPA & EDGE/GPRS/GSM and the SC6825, which supports EDGE/GPRS/GSM, are based on a highly efficient multi-core architecture delivering the lowest cost platform available for dual-core TD-SCDMA and EDGE smartphone products. The single-chip chipsets integrate a dual-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A5 core processor, a dual-core Mali 400 graphics processor and multimedia and hardware accelerators for differentiated performance and user experience. Both chipsets are further paired with a single-chip mutimode RF transceiver for a high level of integration and are pin-to-pin compatible, enabling handset makers to leverage a common handset development effort for products shipping to China as well as to emerging markets.

In addition to their high level of integration and low-cost architecture, Spreadtrum’s chipsets further deliver standout graphics performance. The solutions’ powerful graphics processing capability enhances the user experience for games and other graphics-rich applications, and enables Spreadtrum to bring high end features such as the larger screen sizes more commonly found in premium smartphones to low-cost devices.

“The benchmark results we are achieving for our dual-core solution, measured by popular benchmark programs such as AnTuTu and GLBenchmark 2.5, significantly outperform other commercial dual-core products,” added Dr. Li. “This powerful processing capability provides our customers with an even more cost-effective and power-efficient way to deliver high end features in low-cost smartphones.”

Other features of Spreadtrum’s SC8825 and SC6825 chipsets include support for HD 1280×720 LCD display, H.264 720p video playback, up to 8 megapixel RGB camera and dual-SIM, dual-standby capability. The chipsets ship with turnkey Android and systems software, reducing the engineering time and resources required by handset makers to bring devices to market, with reference implementations available for both 4-layer and 6-layer PCB layouts.

The SC8825 and SC6825 are commercially available now. The chipsets have already been incorporated by leading China handset makers into smartphone models that are expected to ship commercially during 2Q 2013.

About Spreadtrum Communications, Inc.

Spreadtrum Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPRD; “Spreadtrum”) is a fabless semiconductor company that develops mobile chipset platforms for smartphones, feature phones and other consumer electronics products, supporting 2G, 3G and 4G wireless communications standards. Spreadtrum’s solutions combine its highly integrated, power-efficient chipsets with customizable software and reference designs in a complete turnkey platform, enabling customers to achieve faster design cycles with a lower development cost. Spreadtrum’s customers include global and China-based manufacturers developing mobile products for consumers in China and emerging markets around the world. For more information, visit www.spreadtrum.com.

SC8825 TD-HSPA+/TD-SCDMA/GSM/GPRS/EDGE Baseband Chip [product site, April 2, 2013]

Spreadtrum’s SC8825 is a highly integrated mixed signal baseband processor for dual-mode TD-SCDMA/HSDPA/HSUPA/HSPA+ and GSM/GPRS/EDGE applications. SC8825 integrates a dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A5 processor, a dual-core Mali 400 graphics processor and multimedia and hardware accelerators in a highly efficient system architecture that brings differentiated performance and user experience to low-cost smartphones. SC8825 is coupled with Spreadtrum’s single-chip tri-band TD-SCDMA/quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM RF transceiver for small footprint, and ships with turnkey Android systems software for rapid time to market and efficiency in handset design.

SC8825 Baseband Chip Diagram

SC8825 Key Features

Core Description	ARM Cortex-A5 dual-core, clock speeds up to 1.2GHz 32KB I-Cache, 32KB D-Cache 32KB I-Cache, 32KB D-Cache 128bit FP data path
Communication Features	GSM/GPRS/EDGE standards, GSM850/EGSM900/DCS1800/PCS1900 EGPRS Class 12 TD-SCDMA standards (3GPP R7), 2010~2025MHz / 1880~1920MHz/2300~2400MHz HR, FR, EFR, AMR-NB HSPA+ 4.2 Mbps，HSUPA 2.2 Mbps
Multimedia Support For	Mali 400 GPU MP2, 40MTri/s, 700Mpix/s, OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 Decoder: MPEG4/H.263 720p@30fps; H.264 720p@30fps ; VP8 720p@30fps Encoder:H.263/H.264/MPEG4 D1@30fps Video Streaming: MPEG4/H.263/H.264 720p@30fps 3G-324M Video Telephony 8 MP Camera Sub-system JPEG decoder/encoder Support MP3/AAC/AAC+/MIDI/AMR-NB/WAV format Audio codec included
LCD Display Features	Support up to HD resolution Built-in LCD Controller，touch panel controller MIPI and RGB @60fps Support OSD / Rotation / Scaling
Memory I/F Support For	NAND flash(8bit and 16 bit devices) HW ECC, multi-bit ECC 2G byte SDR/LPDDR1/LPDDR2 (16bit and 32bit devices) eMMC(4.4.1) boot
Peripheral I/F Support For	HS USB 2.0 4 x UART 3 x SPI interface , 3-wire SPI,4-wire SPI, synchronous SPI 4 x I2C interfaces 2 x I2S and PCM interface 3 x SDIO interfaces 1 x eMMC interfaces 2 x SIM/USIM interfaces 4 x PWM outputs ETM port More than 100 GPIO pins 8*8 keyboard interfaces
Other Features	Operating ambient temperature range: -45 to +95 degrees centigrade 12.1mm×12.1mm 517-ball, 0.4mm ball pitch

SC6825 GSM/GPRS/EDGE Baseband Chip [product site, April 2, 2013]

Spreadtrum’s SC6825 is a highly integrated mixed signal baseband processor for GSM/GPRS/EDGE applications. SC6825 integrates a dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A5 core processor, a dual-core Mali 400 graphics processor and multimedia and hardware accelerators in a highly efficient system architecture that brings differentiated performance and user experience to low-cost smartphones. SC6825 is coupled with Spreadtrum’s single-chip quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM RF transceiver for small footprint, and ships with turnkey Android systems software for rapid time to market and efficiency in handset design.

SC6825 Baseband Chip Diagram

SC6825 Key Features

Core Description	ARM Cortex-A5 dual-core, clock speeds up to 1.2GHz 32KB I-Cache, 32KB D-Cache 256KB L2 Cache 128bit FP data path
Communication Features	GSM/GPRS/EDGE standards, GSM850/EGSM900/DCS1800/PCS1900 EGPRS Class 12 HR, FR, EFR, AMR-NB
Multimedia Support For	Mali 400 GPU MP2, 40MTri/s, 700Mpix/s, OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 Decoder:MPEG4/H.263 720p@30fps; H.264 720p@30fps ; VP8 720p@30fps Encoder:H.263/H.264/MPEG4 D1@30fps Video Streaming: MPEG4/H.263/H.264 720p@30fps 3G-324M Video Telephony 8 MP Camera Sub-system JPEG decoder/encoder Support MP3/AAC/AAC+/MIDI/AMR-NB/WAV format Audio codec included
LCD Display Features	Support up to HD resolution Built-in LCD Controller，touch panel controller MIPI and RGB @60fps Support OSD / Rotation / Scaling
Memory I/F Support For	NAND flash(8bit and 16 bit devices) HW ECC, multi-bit ECC 2G byte SDR/LPDDR1/LPDDR2 (16bit and 32bit devices) eMMC(4.4.1) boot
Peripheral I/F Support For	HS USB 2.0 4 x UART 3 x SPI interface , 3-wire SPI,4-wire SPI, synchronous SPI 4 x I2C interfaces 2 x I2S and PCM interface 3 x SDIO interfaces 1 x eMMC interfaces 2 x SIM/USIM interfaces 4 x PWM outputs ETM port More than 100 GPIO pins 8*8 keyboard interfaces
Other Features	Operating ambient temperature range: -45 to +95 degrees centigrade 12.1mm×12.1mm 517-ball, 0.4mm ball pitch