iSuppli's Teardown Analysis Service on July 11 obtained an iPhone 3G and
commenced a dissection in order to identify component suppliers, as well as to
determine preliminary part and system costs. Per the teardown analysis and
subsequent examinations by analysts, iSuppli has issued a preliminary estimate
of $174.33 for initial production costs for the 8Gbyte iPhone 3G.
At $174.33, the BOM and manufacturing cost of the new iPhone is markedly less
than the $227 that iSuppli estimated for the first-generation, 8Gbyte 2G iPhone
in June 2007. While using a new design, the iPhone 3G really represents a
refinement of the original iPhone 2G, according to iSuppli.
Infineon AG was the big winner in the key baseband section of the iPhone 3G
torn down by iSuppli, contributing its HSDPA/WCDMA/
chip that includes dual
microprocessor cores. Solely-sourced items include Infineon's baseband
solution, RF transceiver and Global Positioning System (
devices; Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd's applications processor integrated with
Synchronous
Group Ltd.'s WLAN device and Cambridge Silicon Radio's (CSR's) Bluetooth chip.
iSuppli conducted a teardown analysis of one 3G iPhone and will update its
findings.
Multi-sourced items include Toshiba Corp.'s 8Gbyte NAND flash memory chip. other
likely sources for this part include Samsung.
Other observations made by
iSuppli's analysis team include
- The redesigned internals of
the iPhone 3G include only one large Printed Circuit Board (PCB), instead
of the two nested PCBs found in the 2G version. The iPhone 3G uses a
10-layer board, compared to the less-expensive six-layer PCBs commonly
employed in mobile handsets. - The battery is not soldered into
the iPhone 3G as it is done in the 2G, making it more serviceable. - Some chips have the Apple
logo or are unmarked. Although iSuppli has been able to identify many of
these parts and their true manufacturers by de-capping the chips and
examining their dies, some devices remain unidentifiable at this time.
Beyond the $174.33 BOM and manufacturing cost of the iPhone 3G, Apple is
spending an estimated $50 on IP royalties per unit shipped. With the 8Gbyte
version retail-priced at $199, and the estimated $300 subsidy paid by AT&T
to Apple for each unit, Apple is selling the product at a price of $499, and
spending $224.33 to produce each one. This gives Apple a BOM, manufacturing and
royalty margin of 55 percent for each 8Gbyte iPhone 3G unit sold.