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Fuzzy Logic The US $173 iPhone 3G cost estimate from iSuppli – that’s cheap!
Fuzzy Logic The US $173 iPhone 3G cost estimate from iSuppli – that’s cheap! | The US $173 iPhone 3G cost estimate from iSuppli – that’s cheap! |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Wednesday, 25 June 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 3 Given iSuppli’s strong contacts in the manufacturing world, and given a range of details leaked about the iPhone 3G and already known, in addition to the knowledge of what is in the first generation iPhone, an educated guesstimate isn’t hard for iSuppli to make. PC World has the details of iSuppli’s findings, which indicate that the touchscreen now costs US $20 and is the second most expensive part of the iPhone’s parts cost, with the and 8GB of flash storage (NAND memory) the most expensive part at US $22.80. There is no breakdown in PC World’s article for the rest of the components, such as the case, the battery, the buttons, the headphone socket, dock connector, the CPU, the chipset for communications, audio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, the antenna and more, but iSuppli says these components add up to US $164. Assembly costs US $9, and if you add those two figures together, you get US $173. iSuppli also promise to take an iPhone 3G apart when they launch on July 11 to do the breakdown again, this time knowing exactly which chips were used and seeing the components to make an even more educated estimation. And, As iSuppli states, this raw bill of materials cost does not include “the cost of software development, shipping, distribution, packaging and accessories included with each iPhone.” Surely, these all add to the cost. You have a headset with microphone, the USB cable, the power adaptor, a basic manual, the plastic packaging within, the box itself and the other costs to consider. And all those things add to the iPhone’s price. Yet the iPhone 3G in an 8GB configuration only costs US $199 upfront. Why is it so? Continued on page 2. |
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