It costs Apple an estimated $236 to make and assemble its new iPhone 6s Plus, roughly one-third the $749 retail price of the smartphone, according to a teardown analysis by IHS Technology.
The research firm pulled apart Apple’s newest device to get a closer look at its components and analyze the likely cost of materials and manufacturing, Re/Code reported.
IHS estimates the cost of materials to be $211.50—roughly $20 less than the bigger iPhone 6s Plus.
IHS Senior Research Director Andrew Rassweiler said the teardown analysis has limitations, because it does not take into account other costs—from shipping and warehousing, to research and development and marketing.
For example, the latest iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are sturdier than their predecessors, featuring a more robust 7000 series aluminum enclosure, a more shatter-resistant Gorilla Glass 4 cover and gaskets that would appear to make the device more water-resistant (so it might survive a toilet or tub drop).
“They’re trying to make it tougher and longer-lasting to support this financing program,” said Rassweiler.
Apple is incorporating radio frequency components, including the wireless transmitting and receiving from Qualcomm, that allow for iPhone 6s and 6s Plus to be used by a variety of global carriers. This way Apple can quickly roll out the device worldwide without making dedicated hardware for each carrier.
IHS estimates that flash memory is incredibly cheap—about 35 cents a gigabyte. So coaxing consumers to upgrade from, say, a smartphone with 16 gigabytes of memory to 64 gigs costs Apple about $17 more in component costs.
However, at retail, consumers pay an additional $100 for the extra storage—a tidy windfall.
