Defining reliability specifications for consumer electronic devices

With the continuous march towards building thinner, lighter and faster consumer electronic devices, building affordable and reliable hardware that continues to meet customer expectations is becoming challenging. This is particularly challenging for cost sensitive portable devices such as tablets where time to market is critical and consumer usage conditions vary vastly. Unlike semiconductor, automotive or aerospace industries where widely accepted reliability standards exists, there are no industry reliability standards exists for consumer electronics devices. A deep understanding of consumer usage conditions and environments is critical in deriving appropriate system level reliability specifications and test methods in order to build cost effective devices that surpass customer expectations. This talk will provide an overview of system level reliability test methods for consumer electronic devices and will cover various approaches in deriving reliability specifications based on product usage conditions.