It"s a given that anytime to buy some fancy new-fangled electronics product that you are going to pay more than what the item cost to make. The company has to make a profit, right? Well, Apparently, Apple is making around quite a haul on the just-released iPhone X - to the tune of a 64% margin, according to a new report.
Tech teardown firm TechInsights is reporting that Apple"s newest iPhone, which costs $999 for the 64GB model and $1,149 for the 256GB model, only costs about $357.50 in parts to make. The profit margin for the $699 base iPhone 8 is also around 59%. The numbers reflect the cost of just parts.
Al Cowsky, the costing analyst for TechInsights, told Reuters that Apple can get away with that kind of pricing because the company is the "800-pound gorilla" in the electronics industry. The site, which is planning to publish its iPhone X analysis later this evening, said that the iPhone X"s 5.8-inch OLED display and related parts cost Apple about $65.50, while the older-tech LCD screens of the 4.7-inch iPhone 8 handsets run about $36.
The iPhone X also uses a stainless steel case, which normally runs about $36. The iPhone 8 still uses an aluminum case for $21.50. Cowsky said the steel case represented a "lesson learned" from the case-bending problems of the aluminum iPhone 6 when it first launched in 2014.
Both iFixit and TechInsights gave teardown reports on the iPhone X last week. We posted our first impressions of the device earlier today.
Update: The story has been clarified to reflect that the listed cost is only for parts.