Customer: Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer
Scope:
In order to increase their market share and meet end consumer needs, customer planned to launch new products while extending the product life of old ones. They wanted a partner who could help them increase product life with version upgrades as well as support them with new product development for launch in Japanese and global markets.
Challenges:
With several source code branches for multiple product lines, there was a need to analyze specifications of all product lines while developing new products and upgrading existing ones. This would help identify the features/changes that could be reused, thus reducing development and validation costs. Another challenge that arose was meeting operator requirements at optimal costs because the products were being launched in various operator networks.
Solution:
- Android versions: Android 8 and above
- Android Layers/Sub-Systems involved: Bootloader, Kernel & Drivers, HAL/HIDL, Middleware, Generic Framework, Applications, Multimedia Subsystem, Connectivity, Telephony
- Operators: KDDI, SoftBank, Y! Mobile, UQ, JCOM, ATT, VZW
- Chipsets: Qualcomm (SD630, SD429 and QM215), MediaTek (MTK6761, 6765, and 6768)
- Sasken was involved in the following:
- Analyzing and identifying best ways to reuse changes from one product to another, deciding branching strategies in collaboration with customer, identifying test cycles to meet quality criteria with optimal testing
- Creating reusable code snippets to enable faster migration of customer changes while implementing operator requirements in applications and framework components from one version of Android to another
- Propagating relevant bug fixes across products and improving productivity
- Identifying and automating test cases that need to be executed repeatedly
- Integrating all security patches, from Google and chipset vendors, regularly to keep devices secure
- Efficient project management to take care of scheduling development such that redundant efforts in development and testing are minimized
Impact:
- Customer was able to provide upgrades and launch new devices on schedule in several markets with over 30% cost savings, thus meeting increased consumer demand.
- They were able to provide secure devices, thus upholding not only their brand’s reputation but also protecting the financial health of their end customers.
- Customer was able to provide software to their end customers with almost-zero defects due to Sasken’s Quality Assurance mechanisms that utilized automated and manual test cycles.
