Tear Down Shows iPhone 4S Parts Cost The Same as the iPhone 4

[Maura]

All Things D's Arik Hesseldahl reports that according to IHS iSuppli's recent teardown of the new iPhone, Qualcomm has replaced Intel's newly acquired chip maker Infineon as one of the major contributor of chips to the new phone. According to iSuppli analyst Andrew Rassweiler, Qualcomm is doing very nicely thank you from the iPhone 4S, with Infineon reduced to only supplying one small chip in the new phone. It seems that despite various court cases and so on, Samsung is still very much in favour with Apple, as iSuppli found that the new phone's A5 chip was virtually identical to the one made by Samsung for the iPad 2. Rassweiler also estimated that the iPhone 4S's BOM (Bill Of Materials), which is basically the cost of all its components, is around $188 for the 16GB iPhone 4S, $202 for the 32GB version, and $245 for the 64GB version. These figures are very close indeed to the figure of $187.51 proffered by iSuppli for the iPhone 4 last year. So, basically we have a technically superior phone, for the same costs.

Source: iPhone 4S Cracked Open, Money Spills Out - Arik Hesseldahl - Mobile - AllThingsD