Total cost of components that go into the latest iPad is between $274 and $361, depending on the model, which is still $42 cheaper than the entry-level iPad with Retina display. The priciest iPad Air component by and large is its Retina display and the touchscreen assembly. Both of these additions lead to a backlit display and a COP sensor that is present beneath the Gorilla Glass’s outer layer.
The teardown that was spotted by AllThingsD also reveals that the display assembly used a single glass layer instead of two. This reduced the thickness from 2.23 mm to 1.8 mm courtesy of Apple engineers. Analyst at ISH Andrew Rassweiler says Samsung and LG Display account for the screen.
Other things to note is that there are only 36 LED on iPad Air, while iPad 3 has 84, but still iPad Air has less weight and more brightness. The bill of material says: $90 for the display, $43 for touchscreen components, $32 for Qualcomm cellular networking LTE chips, $9 and $60 for 16GB and 128 GB flash storage, $10 for DRAM chips and $18 for the A7 64-bit processor ($5 less than the A5 model on iPad 3).
Apple says iPad Air’s profit for Apple will be 45% on the 16 GB Wi-Fi variant and almost 61% for the 128 GB Cellular variant. The Wi-Fi model for 16 GB variant is for $499 while the cost is $929 for the 128 GB model. The cellular model is $130 extra. The price also includes packaging, sales cost, R&D, distribution, product assembly, marketing etc.
So what do you think guys ?
