Apple could earn up to $1,000 for every iPhone 11 Pro Max sold. That's what an analysis of internal components reveals
Apple's iPhone 11s cost the user nearly three times as much as they cost Apple, including assembly and excluding marketing. That's what analysts at Tech Insights found. Like every year, Tech Insights has managed to obtain the list of hardware components hidden under the shell of iPhones.
As a result, it was able to calculate the cost of production, including assembly and pre-sales testing of the iPhone 11. The model analyzed is the top of the range: iPhone 11 Pro Max, with 512 GB of storage, color Midnight Green, which on the U.S. site of Apple is sold at a price of $ 1,449 and in Italy at a price of 1,689 euros. The analysis of the internal components of this version has not reserved big surprises, neither from the technological nor from the economic point of view: apart from the electronics produced in house by Apple, they are all components that are purchased on the market and used by many other manufacturers in the Android world. What is surprising, however, is the huge gap between the cost of production and the selling price.
How much does it cost to produce an iPhone
The most expensive components inside an iPhone 11 Pro Max are the cameras that, for the first time in the history of iPhones, there are three at the back (manufactured by Sony), one at the front (also Sony) and a front infrared camera for TrueDepth (by STMicroelectronics). The iPhone 11 Pro Max's camera system costs a total of $73.5. The second most expensive component is the display: $66.5. Instead, Apple spends $64 to build the A13 processor (which includes 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM made by Samsung inside) and $69.50 for the memory.
The battery, which Apple doesn't want touched by unauthorized technicians, costs just $10.50. The modem, made by Intel, costs $25.5 (to which another $30 must be added for the radio department). The total production cost of the iPhone 11 Pro Max 512 GB, including $21 for assembly and testing, stops at $490.
How much Apple makes on each iPhone
If the iPhone 11 Pro Max costs Apple $490, but sells for $1,449, that means Apple has a theoretical margin of nearly a thousand dollars on each of these smartphones sold. Of course, there's a lot of difference between theory and practice, and within that thousand dollars, there are also abundant costs for marketing, logistics, store maintenance, customer service and more.