Malcolm Owen
The iPhone 15 Pro Max is 12% more expensive for Apple to build than its iPhone 14 counterpart, a teardown reveals, with the parts of each unit estimated to cost Apple around $558 to buy.
Apple's profit margin for its products relies heavily on bringing down the cost of the hardware relative to the selling price, among other important factors. While the intention is to bring the cost down, sometimes the introduction of new features can push that cost up instead.
In a teardown between Nihon Keizai Shimbun and Fomalhaut Techno Solutions of Japan, Nikkei reports that the iPhone 15 Pro Max costs a lot more than the iPhone 14 Pro Max to produce. The bill of materials for the iPhone 15 Pro Max is $558, the report states, with a 47% parts-to-cost ratio.
The figure is claimed to be about 12% more expensive than the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The display is 10% more expensive in the iPhone 15 Pro Max than the iPhone 14 version, while the titanium frame pushed costs up by 43%, and the A17 Pro chip costs 27% more than the A16 Bionic. The telephoto camera and its tetraprism system is also a massive 3.8 times more expensive than its predecessor, according to the report.
Other models in the iPhone 15 lineup are similarly expensive, with the iPhone 15 Pro costing Apple $523 to produce, up 8% from its year-ago counterpart. The iPhone 15 Plus costs $442, about 10% higher than the iPhone 14 Plus.
The iPhone 15 is deemed to have the highest change in cost, with its $423 bill of materials approximately 16% more expensive than the iPhone 14.
In a previous bill of materials calculation, the iPhone 14 Pro Max was thought to be just 3.7% more expensive to make than the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
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6 Comments
This fits in perfectly with the concept that product prices are normally between 2.5 to 3.5 times the cost of parts.
OMG! I knew it. Apple is dead.
Interesting. Apple haters would have you think it costs $100 to make an iPhone and Apple is just the embodiment of greed charging $1k+ for an iPhone.
There's sure a lot of certainty in the headline considering how all the parts costs are estimated.
It would be helpful to know the estimated costs of individual components to make any sense of the estimates and how they affect the whole. The titanium frame costs 43% more. More than what? Is it a significant part of the construction cost? How about the camera that is "a massive 3.8 times more expensive than its predecessor." Is that $3.80 vs. $1? How much does it matter? How about the retail price of the phones being compared? If I remember correctly (not doing research the author won't do) the base iPhone 15 Pro costs $100 more but comes with more storage than the base 14 Pro. Storage prices may have declined. Or increased. What do I know?
What it means is Apple is expected to sell it for 658 bucks to fit in with the OEM PC and Android companies. :smile: