iPhone 7 costs more to build than any other iPhone in history

The bill of materials (BOM) for Apple’s new iPhone 7 checks in a little bit higher than previous models, with IHS Markit revealing that the total cost of components in an entry-level 32GB iPhone 7 comes out to about $219.80. “Total BOM costs for the iPhone 7 are more in line with what we have seen in teardowns of recent flagship phones from Apple’s main competitor, Samsung, in that the costs are higher than in previous iPhone teardown analyses,” Andrew Rassweiler of IHS Markit said in a press release. “All other things being equal, Apple still makes more margin from hardware than Samsung, but materials costs are higher than in the past.” DON'T MISS: All the biggest complaints about the iPhone 7 As to the increased cost of components, IHS notes that Apple’s eradication of the 16GB iPhone model played a role even while the price of NAND flash has fallen over the last 12 months. The most expensive iPhone 7 component, not surprisingly, is the display which costs an estimated $43. Following that, the iPhone’s collection of baseband chips from Intel, Broadcom and others comes out to $33.90. Other component costs of note include Apple’s A10 processor which costs $26.90 and the iPhone 7’s camera system (including the front and rear modules) which costs an estimated $19.90. An Excel spreadsheet listing out all of the iPhone 7’s components along with the corresponding cost for each can be viewed over here. To be fair, it's worth noting that the figures above simply lay out the cost of an individual iPhone’s components. They do not, we should emphasize, represent how much it truly costs to develop and manufacture an iPhone. Aside from raw component costs, there are R&D costs, prototyping expenses, machining and tooling costs, transportation costs and more. Nonetheless, looking at the iPhone 7’s components is instructive insofar as it gives us a barometer by which to measure the BOM relative to previous iPhone models. Apple of course won’t comment on these teardown estimations, though Tim Cook did note during an earnings conference call in April of 2015 that most teardowns are way off the mark. "And I haven’t even seen this, but generally, there’s cost breakdowns that come out around our products that are much different than the reality," Cook said. "I’ve never seen one that is anywhere close to being accurate." Lastly, and for some additional context, the iPhone 5's BOM supposedly came in at around $199.