“There’s a new iPad in town, and that means that folks at the research firm IHS are once again doing what they do best: Taking it apart for a look inside,” Arik Hesseldahl reports for AllThingsD.
“In the latest of its teardown analysis reports obtained by AllThingsD, the firm says Apple’s iPad Air costs between $274 and $361 to build depending on model,” Hesseldahl reports. “Some key changes occurred on the iPad Air from the third generation iPad, which was the last full-sized model IHS studied.”
“The biggest changes he said were with the display and touchscreen assembly. For one thing, it’s thinner and has fewer layers in the combined assembly than in previous models. But at an estimated combined cost of $133 (About $90 for the display and $43 for the touchscreen parts.) it’s a lot more expensive than before, he says. South Korean electronics companies LG Display and Samsung are both thought to be suppliers of the display, he says,” Hesseldahl reports. “For the touchscreen bit, there’s a new type of sensor known as a cycle-olefin polymer (COP) sensor that sits underneath the outer layer of Gorilla Glass that users touch. What used to require two layers of glass, Rassweiler says, now requires only one. The result, the whole assembly measures out to 1.8 millimeters thick versus 2.23 millimeters on the third-generation model.”
Much more in the full article here.