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| It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Apple's history of high margins that Apple has another very profitable product in the iPod touch. According to iSuppli's latest cost analysis tear-down, Apple stands to make a profit of just under 100 percent (92.9) on its highest-tech iPod. The cost, $155.04, is a cumulative total of manufacturing, assembly, test expenses, and parts costs. It does not, however, take into account: [...] software, intellectual property, accessories and packaging. The BOM figure also does not include research and development costs, because such data cannot be derived from a teardown and component analysis. Component costs fluctuate, so iSuppli's estimates are accurate as of time of research (and not necessarily this very moment), but I can't imagine fluctuation would cause that much of a discrepancy right now. As expected, the majority of the expenses involved in the creation of an iPod touch come from the cost of the flash memory (8GB $40.00), and the display ($21.99). The other big ticket item is the "Touchscreen Assembly and Integration" ($21.70). The battery is an 800mAh unit that costs a mere $2.35—something that will certainly annoy you when it comes time to replace it for $45. iSuppli estimates that, like human and chimp DNA, the iPhone and iTouch are only 90 percent similar: However, the iPod touch’s design differs from the iPhone in that it is uniquely optimized to meet its form-factor and cost requirements. To cut space usage, the iPod touch makes use of some advanced packaging for its components not seen in the iPhone, including 0201 diodes and passive components in 01005 enclosures on the touch’s WLAN module. Other differences include a single PCB in the touch versus dual in the iPhone, and different WLAN components. Add these to what we already knew—the iPod touch has no Bluetooth and no microphone—and it is almost a surprise that they are only 10 percent different. |
Source: Arstechnica
