

How much of an iPhone is made by Samsung? - asifjamil
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/apple-and-samsungs-symbiotic-relationship?repost=true

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X-Istence
The thing to remember is that Samsung is a huge conglomerate that has many
different sub-division/companies.

Samsung Semiconductor is different and separate from Samsung
Telecommunications. They are all under an umbrella corporation named Samsung
Electronics, and that is owned by the Samsung Group. Samsung also does ship-
building (Samsung Heavy Industries), engineering, and life insurances ... ;-)

Some of these companies are getting so big that it is almost becoming possible
for one division or child company to sue another child company...

I don't think that Samsung Heavy Industries is losing sleep over Apple suing
Samsung Telecommunications. And it would be in the best interest of Samsung to
keep their telecommunications company and semiconductor company as far apart
in terms of technology so that other companies would still be willing to come
to them to manufacture their parts without having to worry about Samsung
putting those parts in their own devices.

~~~
joezydeco
I thought part of the current discussion was "Well, if Apple is giving Samsung
grief over selling the Galaxy Tab, Samsung should make life difficult for
Apple component-wise." Say if a part was magically "unavailable" for a week or
two.

It's hard to tell who has who over a barrel at the moment. At Apple's volumes,
can they change suppliers quickly? Can Samsung afford to piss off Apple just
to get the Galaxy Tab back on the market?

~~~
smiler
They would have to imply to Apple that the part would be available if the tab
went back on the market. That's extortion!

~~~
joezydeco
Wasn't the A4/A5 chip fabbed by Samsung? Apple doesn't have a chipmaking
plant...yet. There's one part that's Apple-only.

And Samsung wouldn't have to imply anything. They could just make life harder
for the iPad supply chain.

~~~
X-Istence
Breach of contract would just make it bad for Samsung Semiconductor, because I
don't believe that Apple would leave that up to chance ...

~~~
jarek
You appear to be assuming there are no clauses regarding unforeseen production
difficulties, associated supply problems, and penalties in said contract.

------
computator
What's the most expensive part in an iPhone at the component level?

According to the teardown, it is the display ($38.50). Well, that's no
surprise. (In fact, I've been quoted more to replace a broken laptop display
than the price of the laptop.)

The second most expensive? It's the flash memory (16GB at $26.00). Also not
surprising.

What is surprising--at least to me--is the third most expensive component.
That would be the camera ($13.70).

I skipped over the "mechanicals and electro-mechanicals" ($19.97) and "other
parts" ($15.19) because they are not a single part or a coherent subsystem.

The camera cost explains a lot to me. I could never figure out how the iPhone
was getting such great VIDEO quality out of what on the surface appears to be
the same camera as on low-end cellphones and crappy webcams. I thought that
maybe the iPhone had a clever software implementation of MPEG4 encoding or
something.

The answer turns out to be a really good lens and really good CCD. The camera
represents almost 8% of the component cost.

Another way of looking at it is that the camera represents $43.00 of the
average $560.00 sale price. I'll bet that this ratio is on par with the cost
of a lens+CCD inside a camcorder.

~~~
cleaver
One thing I saw missing from all the comments and cost breakdowns is how I see
the major component of the iPhone: _software_. The comments on the Economist
seemed to be along the lines of: "see how stupid the American company is...
outsourcing everything to Asian companies who are going to steal their ideas
and eat their lunch".

The second largest component? Industrial design. Another factor not to be
discounted. And Apple has some of the best in the world.

~~~
wmf
Yeah, it might have been more informative to break down "Apple's slice" into
NRE, SG&A, profit, etc.

------
adriand
Some interesting facts here, but it's very hard to pry them from this
infographic, which strikes me as horribly designed.

The phone background is gratuitous and unnecessary. The cluster of
manufacturers and the products they make in the center of the infographic is
so cluttered that I can't connect one side (the manufacturer) to the other
(the component they provide). Presumably, the amount of area each slice
occupies correlates with total share, but the lack of vertical space means the
corners of these areas are diagonal in many cases, making it even harder to
visually grasp.

I think Tufte would probably call this chartjunk.

------
badusername
I understand the desire for these news websites to have a visual that can be
called an Infographic - it is hot link bait these days. But this one is so
poorly designed that it's unworthy.

Why are there two phones in the background? And with one leading to the other?
Why isn't the data presented beside the label, but only after you follow a
series of closely spaced lines? Why doesn't it answer the question it started
with - how much is made by Samsung, clearly and comprehensively?

------
nirvana
Of the three components that Samsung manufactures for Apple, two of them are
commodities: Flash and DRAM. Apple can source these elsewhere should it need
to, without much hassle.

The third component, the "Applications processor" is the A4/A5 chip. Apple
designed this under license from ARM and so Apple owns the IP. Samsung simply
operates as a foundry.

While it is not trivial to take a chip design from one foundry to another,
since the design involves process technology, etc. It is something Apple could
do from generation to generation.

So, for the next iPhone that comes out this fall, it is quite possible that
the FLASH could come from intel/micron, the DRAM could come from toshiba and
the chip could be manufactured by intel, TSMC, or another foundry. All of
these companies would be happy to have Apple's business.

~~~
martythemaniak
"The third component, the "Applications processor" is the A4/A5 chip. Apple
designed this under license from ARM and so Apple owns the IP. Samsung simply
operates as a foundry."

No, Samsung actually designed and manufactured pretty much the entire A4.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4#Design>

The story seems to be different with the A5.

~~~
X-Istence
"The Cortex-A8 core used in the A4 is thought to use performance enhancements
developed by chip designer Intrinsity (which was subsequently acquired by
Apple) in collaboration with Samsung."

Sorry, what you are saying makes no sense. They designed the chip alongside of
Intrinsity.

Samsung provides the same chip as a different part number:

"The resulting core, dubbed "Hummingbird", is able to run at far higher clock
rates than other implementations while remaining fully compatible with the
Cortex-A8 design provided by ARM. Other performance improvements include
additional L2 cache. The same Cortex-A8 CPU core used in the A4 is also used
in Samsung's S5PC110A01 SoC."

