14 DAY TRIAL // iSuppli's Teardown Analysis Service popped open the shell of an iPhone 3G S to learn what new parts could be found in the new device, as well as their price. The tear-down revealed that Apple’s iPhone 3G S cost roughly $180 to make, with the highest-priced part being pinpointed as the Multilevel-Cell NAND flash memory module – $24.
However, according to cellular-news, the dissection carried out by iSuppli's Teardown Analysis Service also revealed some interesting changes in the parts and their respective suppliers.
"The entry-level, 16Gbyte version of Apple's new iPhone 3G S carries a BOM cost of $172.46 and a manufacturing expense of $6.50, for a total of $178.96," Andrew Rassweiler, director and principal analyst, Teardown Services, for iSuppli, said. "This is slightly higher than iSuppli's estimate of $174.33 for the original low-end 8Gbyte iPhone 3G based on pricing in July 2008. Although the retail price of the 16Gbyte iPhone 3G S is $199, the same as for the 8Gbyte version of the original iPhone 3G, the actual price of the phone paid by the service provider is considerably higher, reflecting the common wireless industry practice of subsidizing the upfront cost of a mobile phone and then making a profit on subscriptions."
Upon introducing the fresh iPhone 3G S, Apple cited overall faster performance, emphasizing the addition of video capture, an autofocus 3-Megapixel camera and a built-in digital compass. Also differentiating the iPhone 3G S from its predecessor is, of course, clock speed. Thanks to a new microprocessor employed by Apple, the device is capable of handling instructions and commands at 600 Mhz. Apple also revealed earlier this month that RAM had been beefed up as well, to double the amount of the iPhone 3G. iPhone 3G S adds another 128 MB of memory, for a total of 256 MB of RAM.
Following Toshiba in its tracks to score high with an expensive part in the iPhone 3G S (flash memory) is Samsung, which "also maintained its position as iPhone's applications processor supplier. Priced at $14.46, the applications processor is the fourth most costly component in the iPhone 3G S after the NAND flash, the display module and the touch-screen assembly," the report in question notes.
The table of the iPhone 3G S Major components and cost drivers in U.S. Dollars can be found here. The estimated value of the entire iPhone 3G S is still pending analysis.