Teardown shows iPhone 5s costs Apple at least $199 to build, minimum of $173 for iPhone 5c

“As is often the case with Apple-designed products, looks can be deceiving,” Arik Hesseldahl reports for AllThingsD. “The results of two teardown studies show that, aside from the most obvious differences, the two phones are very much alike, internally.”

“According the findings of an IHS report coming tomorrow (but shared with AllThingsD today), Apple spends at least $191 on components to build a 16 gigabyte iPhone 5s,” Hesseldahl reports. “The cost rises to $210 for a 64GB unit. The cost of assembly adds another $8 per unit, bringing the range to between $199 and $218. That cost estimate is pretty close to that of the original iPhone 5, which IHS pegged at about $205 last year.”

Hesseldahl reports, “On the colorful, lower-priced iPhone 5c, IHS estimates that the cost of components plus manufacturing ranges from $173 to $183, including $7 for assembly.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Note: Of course, IHS estimated only the total cost of components and assembly which does not factor in the significant R&D, packaging, marketing, and other costs associated with Apple’s iPhones 5s and 5c.

8 Comments

  1. You don’t say?????,

    Apple doesn’t make garbage like the garbage the media and it’s “sponsors” ( wink wink nudge nudge) feed you all the time especially about Apple.

    III – < can you read between the lines analists?

  2. I wish they would do the same with clothes… All the designer clothes that costs thousands of dollars, if you know just the bill of huge material you would fall from your chair. Th same with luxury watches or even a car. The costs of designing a hybrid drivetrain might be hundreds of millions, the costs of the materials are probably less than a handful of thousand dollars…

  3. Every time iFixIt, iSuppli or someone else does this cost breakdown, plenty of smart ones chime back complaining how the cost doesn’t include R&D, or how the cost to Apple could easily be much lower, because Apple buys huge volume in advance…

    There is a very valid reason for this exercise, and the numbers are extremely useful. They are consistently done from year to year (since the first iPhone), and they provide insight into trends. It is clear, from these numbers, that even with all the complex improvements in hardware, Apple continues to successfully manage the cost of those improvements and hold the bill of materials steady.

    This also tells us that we will likely NEVER see a brand new iPhone model that retails for less than about $450-500. Not as long as that bill of materials is up there in the heighbourhood of $180 per unit.

  4. Well of course IHS only calculated the component costs. According to the Adroid fanbois, we Apple “cultists” will pay top dollar for Fisher-Price toy if it has an Apple logo on it. Sheesh.

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