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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.

 

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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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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