First iPhone 5 Bill Of Materials Shows Cost Is $168

by Mike on September 14, 2012

Usually when a popular device comes on the market, we’ll start to get the first details of it through a tear down and this is often followed by a bill of materials which shows the cost of the internal parts.

With the iPhone 5, we now have a preliminary bill of materials which indicates that the company spent approximately $167.50 to manufacture the 16GB iPhone 5 model. This first BOM comes by way of Techinsights and it is important to note that this is just a preliminary one. Techinsights has confirmed that they will come out with a more accurate report next Friday once the device is available in-store and can subsequently be dismantled.

Still though, we can garner some insights through this estimate. The iPhone 5′s BOM came in at $167.50 which is approximately $35 more then its predecessor, the iPhone 4S. The biggest rise in price between the two models is in the processor. The iPhone 4S had a processor worth $21 whereas the new iPhone 5 has one that costs $28. Additionally, the Qualcomm chipset added an additional $7 to the BOM while the new display brought the BOM up by $3.

It is interesting to see these BOMs as it give some insight as to the hardware costs of the device. It does not however take into account other factors such as advertising costs or other costs associated with required for the sale of the device.