Apple is charging between $199 and $399 for its new iPhone 4S, but how much does it cost to make?
The bill of materials on a 16GB iPhone 4S comes out to $188, according to a Thursday teardown from IHS iSuppli (click below for larger image). Add in the manufacturing costs and it jumps to a grand total of $196. Adding a few gigabytes doesn’t greatly increase that cost; a 32GB iPhone 4S costs $207 to make and a 64GB is $245.
While the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S are identical on the outside, iSuppli found a “wealth of innovation” inside the new smartphone.
“Key among these changes is a custom part from Avago that helps give the iPhone 4S its unique capability to be used in multiple wireless systems globally, while still keeping costs down,” Andrew Rassweiler, senior director of teardown services for IHS, said in a statement. “In another surprise development, the 4S employs a Hynix NAND flash memory device. While IHS has already confirmed multiple suppliers for this part, it does mark the first time that IHS has identified a Hynix NAND flash in an iPhone, as opposed to devices from Samsung Electronics Co. ltd. or Toshiba Corp. seen in all previous iPhone and iPad teardowns.”
Those wireless components are among the pricier parts of the iPhone 4S, coming in at $23.54 across all versions. The dual-mode design makes the device a world phone, which iSuppli said was “a unique design approach compared to that used by most cell phone makers, which use different models with unique wireless subsystems to support various wireless carriers’ standards.”
The Avago component, meanwhile, is notable because it can support 2G and 3G technologies across multiple bands, reducing the required PC board footprint.
“This is a very special converged approach that gives Apple a real technology lead over most other manufacturers, further reducing the complexity of the radio frequency/power amplifier (RF/PA) section of the iPhone line beyond Apple’s already highly-integrated design,” Rassweiler said.
The 3.5-inch display, meanwhile, comes in at $23, while the touch screen is $14, and the souped-up 8-megapixel camera costs $17.60.
The second most-expensive component after the display, however, is the memory subsystem, which comes in at $19.20 for the 16GB, $38.40 in the 32GB, and $76.80 in the 64GB model. The Qualcomm baseband processor, meanwhile, is $15.
“Qualcomm obviously is a big winner in the 4S, with company now taking sole ownership of the baseband processor position with its MDM6610 device,” said Wayne Lam, a senior analyst for wireless communications at IHS. “While the Qualcomm MDM6600 was in the CDMA version of the iPhone 4, the Intel (formerly Infineon Technologies AG) PMB9801 was used in the HSPA model. In the iPhone 4S, Qualcomm no longer has to share the iPhone 4 baseband design win with Intel. It will be interesting to see how Intel responds in terms of winning back this socket in the next design cycle.”
The iPhone 4S also has Apple’s dual-core A5 apps processor, which appears to be manufactured by Samsung.
As iSuppli notes, its estimates do not include expenses like software, licensing, or royalties.
For more, see PCMag’s full review of the iPhone 4S and the slideshow below.
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