Just like you, the wizards at iSupply have been poring over iPhone pictures and schematics, and they’ve worked out an estimated cost for the iPhone 5. After tallying up the value of all the guts, a 16GB iPhone costs $199, which is $11 more than the 4S cost to build when it came out.
iSupply adds $8 per phone to account for labor, which seems like a pretty good rate for backbreaking, repetitive work. After adding in the labor cost, the 16GB iPhone comes out to $207, a 32GB iPhone may cost Apple $217 and the 64GB model is estimated to cost $328. So when you decide that 16GB isn’t enough for you, you’re paying a 900% premium for that extra space. Hope your high bitrate mp3s are worth it!
It’s important to stress that these estimates are from a visual teardown, which isn’t actually a teardown at all, but a bunch of dedicated nerds studying images until they identify all the components in the picture. The actual teardown should be coming as soon as somebody (like iFixit) gets a retail unit and takes a pentalobe screwdriver to it. So, probably Friday.
Image courtesy of iLabFactory
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