Prototype modular parts created by Yezz Mobile for Project Ara, Google’s modular smartphone project, are shown during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Toshiba Corp makes the chips that power Google’s Project Ara modular handset, which will let users swap out displays, cameras and batteries as easily as snapping on Lego bricks.

Bloomberg
Tokyo


Google’s key ally in its challenge to the smartphone status quo is a company that Apple’s iPhone drove out of the market.
Toshiba Corp makes the chips that power Google’s Project Ara modular handset, which will let users swap out displays, cameras and batteries as easily as snapping on Lego bricks.
Ara phones have the potential to disrupt the two-year product cycle of Apple and Samsung Electronics Co, which rely on upgrades and features to lure consumers to new models, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts John Butler and Matthew Kanterman. They would also loosen smartphone makers’ grip on suppliers and allow parts manufacturers like Toshiba to sell components directly to end users.
“Right now, you either have a place in an Apple device or you’ve got nothing,” Takeshi Oto, a senior fellow at Toshiba’s logic chip division, said in an interview in Tokyo on February 19. “When the barriers for installing new functions are lowered, component makers like us will benefit.”
The Ara platform is used to make an electronic endoskeleton with magnetically attached components.
 Toshiba’s switch chip lives in that chassis, routing signals between parts that contain its bridge chips. The Tokyo-based chipmaker and industrial group is also behind the technology to transmit data within devices without a physical contact.
Google has exclusive rights to sell the switch chip, while Toshiba is free to sell bridge chips to any module maker, Oto said. Ara devices on the drawing board include a game controller, laser pointers and a night-vision module, according to the projectaraforum blog.
An Ara smartphone prototype that will debut in a trial in Puerto Rico later this year will carry a camera block designed by Toshiba, Oto said. That’s a win for the company in a market dominated by Sony Corp’s image sensors. Toshiba is also developing wireless charging and data transfer modules, he said.
Toshiba sold its mobile phone operations to Fujitsu in 2012, succumbing to the iPhone’s dominance, and now relies on memory and logic semiconductors for about 80% of its operating profit. Its NAND flash chips are found in devices from Samsung’s Galaxy to Apple’s iPad Mini, according to iFixit tear downs.
The Japanese company’s shares were little changed at 487 yen at the close in Tokyo on Wednesday. The stock is trading at about a third of its 1,275 yen peak in 2000.
Ara gives the conglomerate — which makes everything from medical scanners to nuclear power components, notebook computers and televisions — a chance to move up the food chain in the smartphone industry, Toshiba’s Oto said.
“Google is going for a paradigm shift in trying to democratise smartphone hardware, and that’s something worth investing in,” he said.
Modularity does come at a price. Because conventional phones have advantages in power, cost and size, Ara will have to deliver compelling new functions, Oto said. The handicap may be less significant when the platform evolves beyond the smartphone form factor to encompass a variety of devices, he said.
“Once you have standardized interfaces, there is no reason why it has to stop with the phones,” he said. “We are looking ahead to the Internet of Things.”