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Cost of regulatory certifications

morgaine

Information on the costs involved in bringing a consumer device to market seems to be rare as hens' teeth.  Why is hard to know, but possibly it's because business has developed in a culture of secretive competitive advantage rather than collaborative openness.  Whatever the reasons for it, cost breakdowns are almost never made public, and independent estimates are necessarily just guesses.

 

The Fairphone "ethical smartphone" project bucks this trend --- the company has published a  "Cost Breakdown of the First Fairphone", with accompanying detailed Key (PDF).  The graphic nicely depicts how each euro of the smartphone's cost is allocated, and the Key expands on the graphic.  (Gizmag's "First Look"  at the device may also be of interest.)

 

In addition to (partly) admiring the degree of openness, one of the details that caught my eye is the cost of regulatory certifications.  The cost breakdown is averaged over 25,000 devices, and 9 euro per device is allocated to certifications:  CE, GCF, RoHS, FCC, REACH and others.  See pages 4-5 of their Key for more details.  It's worth noting that they include FCC certification despite not intending to market the first handset in USA.  The reason is explained very clearly --- "many operators and operator groups request the FCC certification as part of general quality assessment of the device".  Very interesting indeed.

 

Estimating regulatory certification as a one-off cost per design brought to market, this suggests that broad regulatory compliance costs Fairphone in the region of 225,000 euro.  Although other companies will unavoidably experience somewhat different costs, this single data point does nevertheless provide us with a firm actual figure instead of having to rely on guesswork.  It's probably near the bottom end of the scale since Fairphone doesn't have deep coffers.

 

Note that since the device is a phone and hence an intended radiator, it carries more onerous certification requirements than a computer board (and certification aside, is also severely encumbered by telephony royalties).  Broad regulatory certification for devices like Pi and BBB probably costs very significantly less.

 

===

 

PS. Unfortunately for fans of technology, the Fairphone breakdown doesn't include the BoM as one might well have hoped. image  Why this is so is explained on page 4 of the Key, and although they seem to hint at future improvement in this area, it seems to be wishful thinking at this time.

  • The figure of e225k is very high - I can only assume that it's because it's a phone. Standard EMC testing for a small DC powered device like a Pi would cost about £2-3k (possibly less). You can expect to need a couple of pre-certificate tests to get it right at perhaps £1k per day so the EMC aspects should easily be covered for £5k to the test house (and it can be done for quite  a bit less). ROHS and REACH are paper trail exercises and should ideally be part of the design process - of course it gets harder if you build in far away countries and don't quite know where the bits are coming from. Testing isn't normal as part of ROHS or even useful (usually) as part of design - testing as  a control on production may be good idea if the numbers are large (burgers aren't the only product where it is worth checking that the ingredients are actually what you paid for).

     

    If you need UL approval I understand that it's quite pricey but I've never done it so I don't have any figures.

     

    If you want to sell in Europe you also need to worry about WEEE and EuP (and possibly a whole load of other stuff).

     

    The problem with all this is the damping effect on innovation (it's very hard to legally introduce a product to the market where you only expect to sell a few hundred or thousand pounds worth of it)- I still think there should be exceptions to a lot of the rules for small volume production. The exceptions would have to be carefully thought about because it isn't acceptable to market even just a few of something dangerous.

     

    What happens at the moment (certainly in the UK but I suspect elsewhere too) is that most small manufacturers and re-sellers ignore most of the rules.

     

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    " ... Standard EMC testing for a small DC powered device like a Pi would cost about £2-3k (possibly less) ..."

    Do you have any supporting documentation for this?

     

    The opening sentence

    " .... Information on the costs involved in bringing a consumer device to market seems to be rare as hens' teeth...."

    seemed to indicate information isn't actually out in the wild.

     

    Mark

  • in reply to mcb1

    I can hardly publish a quote from a test house to a customer so the answer to your question is "yes but you can't see it".

     

    The information is readily available (up to a point)  - for small and simple things it's not that hard to find.

     

    First hit on Google search "emc ce test cost"

     

    http://www.uke.uk.com/testing.htm

     

    Of course they quote the lowest figure possible so it compares quite well with my figures.

     

    There are plenty of test houses but most don't publish prices on the web but are pretty keen to give you a quote.

     

    It gets much harder (to estimate) for complex devices which have to satisfy a whole raft of different regulations.

     

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    "yes but you can't see it".

    Fair enough, and yes on the face of the other link, the figure to do the actual testing does seem high.

     

    Mark

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Thanks for the comments and estimates.

     

    I'm puzzled at the gulf between Fairphone's figure and the estimate of a few thousand pounds which is reinforced by UK Electronics Ltd's web quote of around 500 pounds for CE.  Even cutting Fairphone's figure by half owing to their device being a phone, and doubling the CE figure to include FCC, still leaves us with a whole order of magnitude's difference.

  • If you leave everything to a test house this will indeed cost a lot of money. If you invest is test equipment and knowledge it is possible to do a lot of testing yourself. At least you can do a so called ”pre compliance” test. This will tell you weather the equipment will make a chance to pass the ”full compliance” test. For most certifications it is allowed to do the tests yourself. Ignoring the rules and bringing a device to market without certification is a crime. Be sure to have a test report to prove the device is compliant.

  • in reply to jvdberg@ieee.org

    That's a good point, Johan.  We have no way of knowing whether Fairphone's figure includes or excludes the cost of their own emissions test equipment, or whether they handed that whole area of emissions testing over to a specialist lab for several days of work, or even corrective engineering.

     

    Every phone manufacturer will of course have their own RF instrumentation, but a small outfit may not have a controlled RF testing environment and the more esoteric equipment needed.  This applies even more strongly to manufacturers of computer boards which are only unintended radiators.  Little to no RF equipment and experience with RF is central to their development, so the amount of in-house EMC pre-testing possible may be limited.

     

    Fairphone seem to be fairly open.  Perhaps they would consider a request for further breakdown of this cost.

     

    Also, Element14's own regulatory certification engineers might be able to provide some estimates of typical cost.