macnn
06/24/2008, 5:00pm, EDT
Tuesday, June 24th
iSuppli: iPhone 3G costing Apple $173 to build
Each unit of the iPhone 3G is costing Apple approximately $173 to assemble and manufacture, writes iSuppli. The research group says it has conducted a preliminary, "virtual" teardown of the phone, based mainly on arguments from internal experts on fields such as cellphones and wireless technology. If the estimate proves accurate it will represent a 23 percent decline in cost from the original 8GB iPhone, which took $226 to make. The reduction is attributed to a drop in the cost of individual parts.
Apple should in fact make a greater profit on the sales of 3G units, says iSuppli, even though the new devices will sell for as little as $199. This is because it believes carriers are paying Apple roughly $300 to subsidize each phone, maintaining or expanding on the margins of the 4GB, $499 iPhone Apple briefly produced. This margin should only expand over time, as the cost of manufacturing naturally declines. It is predicted to slide to $148 in 2009, and if the phone were left untouched, it would cost as little as $126 in 2012.
Filed under: iPhone, Investor, Apple
Other story tags: iPhone 3G
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left untouched??
and if the phone were left untouched, it would cost as little as $126 in 2012.
HA! iSuppli must not be too familiar with Apple
What??????
Why is this on MacNN???? It has nothing to do with the Mac!
Relevance to Mac
The iPhone is a Mac OS device, and shares APIs with desktop and laptop Macs. So that makes it perfectly appropriate to MacNN
iSuppli again, huh.
iSuppli seems to always present "this is what we think the parts cost" as "this is it costs the company to build it." There's a lot of costs involved in building and shipping a product other than simply the cost of the parts, but iSuppli keeps giving the false impression that retailprice - partscost = profit. And in this case, they haven't even touched the hardware, they have no idea what's inside the box, just a bunch of guesses, yet they come up with a non-round number like 173. Hmm.
well...
Apple is subsidizing the phone_
iSuppli is just as retarded as most other analyst groups_
And their take on the $226 pricetag last year took into account off-the-shelf consumer pricing and not wholesale bulk pricing of the components_
I'm not even bothering with looking into their nonsense this time as it was a waste of time last time and twice is shame on me_
well...
Apple is subsidizing the phone_
iSuppli is just as retarded as most other analyst groups_
And their take on the $226 pricetag last year took into account off-the-shelf consumer pricing and not wholesale bulk pricing of the components_
I'm not even bothering with looking into their nonsense this time as it was a waste of time last time and twice is shame on me_
macnn
fix the "new improved" posting mechansim - it still sucks_