First 'Made in Bangladesh' Smartphone Primo E8i by Walton hits the market

[Shahzaz ud din]

Is there any institution in India that teaches trolling? I'm sure if there is, you guys are teachers there. Indian Institution of Trolls. Please write a book. I wanna learn too

Yes there are sixteen IITs in India.
I-----Indian
I-----Institute of
T-----Trolling

 

[Sliver]

This is the first Smartphone manufactured in South Asia.

Proud moment for every South Asian!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_phone_makers_by_country

 

[Shajida Khan]

They have their own manufactured interfacing
chips , not sure if it's patented or license produced.

Issue is that most of the modern smartphones have SoC (CPU + RAM + NVRAM + sometimes even GPU + Wireless all rolled into a single chip) without need of any 'interfacing chips'. I highly doubt you can fabricate any chips at feature size less than 90 nm required for any modern smartphone. For the record, neither can India.

Walton has some smt assembly lines, the news of which are not available
in news portals so most of it are heresays in the engineering circles.
A team from Walton (EEE) went to Finland some years ago under client Training
programs for the execution of eight complete SMT lines.

I don't doubt that they may have SMT production lines, but for things like smarphone, it is usually much cheaper to buy ready made system boards with all things soldered. Buying components and putting together a mobo-design is much pricey. Unless you are doing a new custom phone, it is always cheaper to take a reference design, add few of your own peripherals and manufacture casing. Most of the input goes in customizing software. Heck if India and BD can focus on making a halfway decent UI running on stock devices, it will be a much bigger win. Remember, iPhone is great because its software fits its hardware really well and keeps user really happy.

For all their so called prowess Chinese phone makers have yet to make a great UX like iPhone and they only try copying it.

I once remember quite sometime back in 2010 or 2011 or so an India company called Notion Ink tried creating an India tablet around Nvidia's reference design. They bombed but their UX and device design was unique and really well thought of from ergonomics point of view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_tablet
https://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/a-deep-look-at-the-notion-ink-adam-tablet-and-where-its-going/
They bombed because their rom was half baked and their update mechanism was broken so it bricked a lot of devices.

 

[bête noire]

I don't doubt that they may have SMT production lines, but for things like smarphone, it is usually much cheaper to buy ready made system boards with all things soldered. Buying components and putting together a mobo-design is much pricey. Unless you are doing a new custom phone, it is always cheaper to take a reference design, add few of your own peripherals and manufacture casing. Most of the input goes in customizing software. Heck if India and BD can focus on making a halfway decent UI running on stock devices, it will be a much bigger win. Remember, iPhone is great because its software fits its hardware really well and keeps user really happy.

While I agree it would be cheaper to buy ready made, if you build in your own country, that would mean people in your country gets paid to do those work and in your own currency while when you buy from china, you have to spend foreign currency from the reserve. Also, while it's more costly, BD made policy to accommodate that. Govt lowered the tax rate from 30 something percent to 1 percent for companies who makes a certain percentage from inside BD and BD workers. So the cost still remains low, and you save foreign reserve money while also having locals having jobs.

 

[Shajida Khan]

While I agree it would be cheaper to buy ready made, if you build in your own country, that would mean people in your country gets paid to do those work and in your own currency while when you buy from china, you have to spend foreign currency from the reserve. Also, while it's more costly, BD made policy to accommodate that. Govt lowered the tax rate from 30 something percent to 1 percent for companies who makes a certain percentage from inside BD and BD workers. So the cost still remains low, and you save foreign reserve money while also having locals having jobs.

Well any business is about making profit and not exactly serving the nation. Its a mean thing but then thats how business work. Lastly, semicondutor and electronics is a pure scale based business. To manufacture a really cost effective device you need to choose component which are manufactured in the biggest volume at a given time. Often times, there is a small time window for this. This is why somewhat older RAM/processor/GPU etc can be some what more pricer than the current mainstream ones if bought new. The sweet point of manufacturing them has passed. It is a logistic nightmare to arrange for all the components and still be profitable. So most of the mid cap companies do this : they use reference designs which are manufactured in bulk and shared by a number of mid cap companies.

 

[Śakra]

What happened to @El Sidd?

 

[Shajida Khan]

What happened to @El Sidd?

I dont know. Mere Rehnuma kahan hei aaj kal.

 

[bête noire]

Well any business is about making profit and not exactly serving the nation.

You clearly missed my point. The companies aren't serving the nation but Govt is making them. Govt gave them incentive based on the percentage threshold of made in our own country. Meaning, if they want the incentive of earning more profit, they themselves would want to ''server the nation'' as you put it. They are earning more profit by manufacturing here than they would otherwise with 30%+ tax instead of 1% only. BD is a poor nation, none of our companies can realistically take the benefit of economics of scales. So the govt is helping them to do as much as they can within the country so they can scale up in future by themselves when economy gets to that point.

And again, while govt do get less tax because of it, govt is loosing less foreign currency reserve. We have huge deficit in trade and we have to use up a lot of forex from remittance to make up for that deficit. The less the amount to import worth, the better.

 

[Mage]

no one is here to bring some sanity.

Can't you do it?

Oh..I see you need to be sane to bring sanity

 

[Species]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_phone_makers_by_country

That's a pretty credible source!

The keyword here is 'manufactured'.

 

[Sliver]

That's a pretty credible source!

The keyword here is 'manufactured'.

walton is in the list. are you saying walton is not a manufacturer of mobile phones?

 

[Species]

walton is in the list. are you saying walton is not a manufacturer of mobile phones?

No, I'm saying all the brands in the list are not manufacturers of mobile phones.

 

[Bilal9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_phone_makers_by_country

Please see,

https://economictimes.indiatimes.co...-start-make-in-india/articleshow/55550865.cms

And Micromax is importing 'CKD' (completely knocked down)units (which is a first for India in this sector), not making SMD motherboards from scratch like Walton, which is one step further in indigenization. Too bad Micromax fell into fourth place from first in India now. Most Indian companies don't even do 'CKD', they assemble from 'SKD' (semi-knocked down) chinese-made modules to ease assembly and make a quick buck. The wiki list of 'manufacturers' posted by @Silver are mostly assemblers.

No, I'm saying all the brands in the list are not manufacturers of mobile phones.

Absolutely. Hit the nail on the head there...assembly is much easier compared to actual 'manufacturing'.

Issue is that most of the modern smartphones have SoC (CPU + RAM + NVRAM + sometimes even GPU + Wireless all rolled into a single chip) without need of any 'interfacing chips'. I highly doubt you can fabricate any chips at feature size less than 90 nm required for any modern smartphone. For the record, neither can India.


I don't doubt that they may have SMT production lines, but for things like smarphone, it is usually much cheaper to buy ready made system boards with all things soldered. Buying components and putting together a mobo-design is much pricey. Unless you are doing a new custom phone, it is always cheaper to take a reference design, add few of your own peripherals and manufacture casing. Most of the input goes in customizing software. Heck if India and BD can focus on making a halfway decent UI running on stock devices, it will be a much bigger win. Remember, iPhone is great because its software fits its hardware really well and keeps user really happy.

For all their so called prowess Chinese phone makers have yet to make a great UX like iPhone and they only try copying it.

I once remember quite sometime back in 2010 or 2011 or so an India company called Notion Ink tried creating an India tablet around Nvidia's reference design. They bombed but their UX and device design was unique and really well thought of from ergonomics point of view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_tablet
https://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/a-deep-look-at-the-notion-ink-adam-tablet-and-where-its-going/
They bombed because their rom was half baked and their update mechanism was broken so it bricked a lot of devices.

On the one hand I agree with you about economies of scale in manufacturing and cost.

But you're forgetting the fact that Bangladeshis may at one point graduate to customizing motherboards to suit local needs and develop local customization for UI too (meaning local language). Such things are not pipe-dreams, they do exist in Korea, China and Japan...

 

[Shajida Khan]

But you're forgetting the fact that Bangladeshis may at one point graduate to customizing motherboards to suit local needs and develop local customization for UI too (meaning local language). Such things are not pipe-dreams, they do exist in Korea, China and Japan...

Its always a question of investment to return. Custom anything is costly. If there is a large enough domestic market and/or export market which is ready to consume your custom made motherboard installed in a phone, sure why not! Who says next Samsung cannot come from Bangladesh?

Software and UI/UX design on the other hand is not as much as capital intensive as it is HR/Skill and IP intensive. So yes, customizing UI/UX on a mass produced hardware makes sense. If you can produce a phone with UI/UX which gives say Apple a run for its money, that will sell really well. BTW it is not exactly an impossible task. It requires a small creative team and not a boat load of money.

Most of the phones I have seen in android world have pathetic software. They are filled with bloatware and they have substandard apps. I once wrote an algorithm which compensated for delay in resistive touch type displays. Damn thing made my Galaxy Y almost as smooth as a capacitive touch. And I did nothing major. Just calculated the gradient of touch motion in software and used it to predict which part of the screen will be touched next. Made scrolling experience on that cheap *** Galaxy Y much better.

 

[Bilal9]

Its always a question of investment to return. Custom anything is costly. If there is a large enough domestic market and/or export market which is ready to consume your custom made motherboard installed in a phone, sure why not! Who says next Samsung cannot come from Bangladesh?

Software and UI/UX design on the other hand is not as much as capital intensive as it is HR/Skill and IP intensive. So yes, customizing UI/UX on a mass produced hardware makes sense. If you can produce a phone with UI/UX which gives say Apple a run for its money, that will sell really well. BTW it is not exactly an impossible task. It requires a small creative team and not a boat load of money.

Most of the phones I have seen in android world have pathetic software. They are filled with bloatware and they have substandard apps. I once wrote an algorithm which compensated for delay in resistive touch type displays. Damn thing made my Galaxy Y almost as smooth as a capacitive touch. And I did nothing major. Just calculated the gradient of touch motion in software and used it to predict which part of the screen will be touched next. Made scrolling experience on that cheap *** Galaxy Y much better.

Bangladesh has a long tradition (twenty plus years) of local UI/UX design. The designers are mostly freelancers and work on Behance and Koroflot sites, among others. The local Graphic design scene based on Macromedia and Adobe platforms have been vibrant as well. I don't know a lot though.

There is no dearth of local UI/UX design talent. Especially on mobile platforms like Android/iOS. Here are some local UI apps and websites developed for local/international companies. Some one more familiar with this sector might comment further....