Research agency IHS has revealed the estimated cost of recently launched iPhones. The company says the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are slightly more expensive to make as compared to their predecessor.
The iPhone 8 with 64GB of storage costs Apple an estimated $247.51 in raw materials, up from $237.94 for the 32 gigabyte base model iPhone 7 from last year. The 64GB iPhone 8 Plus costs an estimated $288.08, up from $270.88 for the iPhone 7 Plus. The iPhone 8 starts at $699 for the 64GB iPhone 8, up from the $649 for 32GB iPhone 7 in 2016 while the iPhone 8 Plus is priced starting at $799, up from $769 in 2016. According to Bloomberg, some of the most expensive components in the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus include the screens and the mechanical enclosures.
Andrew Rassweiler, senior director of cost benchmarking services for IHS Markit said,
The higher total BOM cost for the iPhone 8 Plus can’t be tied to a single area or feature. The higher cost is the result of slower annual component cost erosion tied in with additional features. From a teardown perspective, the biggest cost adders would be the increased NAND flash memory content and new wireless charging components.
The jump from 32GB to 64GB of storage on the base variant of the iPhone 8 costs Apple an additional $6 per unit, while the new 6-core A11 Bionic chip is about $5 more expensive than the A10 Fusion chip found inside the iPhone 7.