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SMT Trends and Technologies: All-inclusive Devices Driving Change
December 24, 2013 |Estimated reading time: Less than a minute
The increasing popularity of handheld electronic devices like smart phones and tablet PCs stems from the convergence of entertainment, information and communication functions into a single “all-inclusive” housing with touch screen control. The miniaturization and integration of these devices is leading to a fundamental change in the manufacturing process.
In the early days, mobile phones used only discrete electronic components. As a result, the component count of a relatively simple mobile phone went up to around 600 to 800 components inside a housing around twice the size of current mobile phones. Increased functionality and greater miniaturization, with phones becoming smaller and thinner, has forced mobile phone makers to reduce the number of components.
Solutions have come from integrating functions (special-function ICs), smaller passives, smaller component interspacings and ultimately embedding components in first- and second-level interconnect substrates. Read the full column here.Editor's Note: This column originally appeared in the December 2013 issue of SMT Magazine.