Mikey Campbell
Despite Tim Cook's harsh dismissal of "guesstimators," research firm IHS Technology claims Apple's latest iPhone 6s and 6s Plus hardware bears material costs of $211.50 and $236, respectively.
According to the firm's findings, Apple's new 3D Touch display was the most costly single component at $52.50 for the iPhone 6s Plus, followed by the A9 processor at $22 apiece, reports Re/code. Other key components include a 2GB DRAM module priced at $17, Qualcomm baseband chip for $13 and front and rear camera modules at $22.50.
Pricing for a 16GB NAND flash chip is estimated at $5.50, while iPhone's WLAN module and battery pack come in at $6 and $4.50, respectively. Combined cost for onboard audio hardware, NFC controller, accelerometer/gyroscope, barometer and compass come in at $18. Miscellaneous items like enclosures, circuit boards and connectors account for another $42, while assembly fees come out to $4.50 per device.
It appears IHS is hedging its bets after Cook slammed what he calls supply chain "guesstimators" in April, as Senior Research Director Andrew Rassweiler said his firm's numbers do not account for research and development, logistics, marketing and other costs. During Apple's quarterly conference call for the second quarter, Cook said he has never seen an estimated bill of materials breakdown "that's even close to accurate."
An initial teardown conducted last week showed iPhone 6s and 6s Plus share a largely unchanged internal layout in respect to last year's models. The overall dimensions increased slightly, as Apple had to make room for a thicker — and much heavier — 3D Touch display, while a decrease in battery size left space for the new Taptic Engine vibration mechanism.
Most recently Chipworks discovered Apple dual-sourced A9 SoC production from Samsung and TSMC, finding Samsung's 14nm fabrication process yields a chip 10 percent smaller than TSMC's design based on a 16nm FinFET process.
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41 Comments
Seriously ? How anyone outside of Apple know bill of material of all components and separate deals, price with those companies. Unless someone inside Apple passes out such info ? It definitely what Tim Cook says as guesstimate.
Not included: OS development costs Development costs of the new NVMe storage controller. Development costs of the A9, as well as paying for taping it out twice for two different processes. Development costs of 3D Touch hardware. Cost of changing the CNC's over to 7000 series aluminum, because of this they can't simply churn out cases for the 6 and 6S, they have to maintain two production lines. But go ahead, IHS. Go ahead.
Quick! Cue the assholes whining about that’s how much it should cost! Because clearly, no other business expense matters at all.
I really don’t understand how can anyone take this guys seriously. With just some simple math using Apple’s own financial reports we get at least $310 gross cost on average per iPhone, excluding research and development, some logistics, marketing, salaries, etc. Is it so difficult for them to say that they don’t know most of the costs? That they have no idea how much some components actually cost, or the manufacturing costs, etc!
If this information is correct why is not a single one of Apple's rather desperate competitors pumping out equivalent quality phones and undercutting them? The answer is because there is a lot more to making ANY PRODUCT than material costs. This information is as inaccurate and useless as anything else an analyst has given us.