On: Apple’s U.S. iPhones Can All Be Made Outside of China If Needed

[eugeniub]

Here’s a widely circulated article from 2017 that found the iPhone X components to cost only $370: https://amp.businessinsider.com/iphone-x-teardown-parts-cost...

[baybal2 → eugeniub]

Component cost guesstimates are not a precise science as more and more components are not sold on open market.

For example, I was astonished when a $1000 IHS report called iPhone 4 battery at ~$10 when the retail price of a replacement is less than that.

iPhone 3 was certainly around just $30 to $40 dollars in cost, but after that, the "arms race" began.

At around iPhone 4 era, all big makers began putting more and more custom and direct sourced components, and estimating costs got much harder.

[pwinnski → baybal2]

This works in both directions. Sometimes you can source a part more cheaply than the estimate, in part because the sourced part is lower quality than what Apple uses. Sometimes you can't source a part as cheaply as the estimate, because the estimate is assuming Apple can get the parts at a scale we can't touch.

Basically, these estimates seem like wild guesses.

[chrismeller → eugeniub]

That’s still a significant percentage to now be dependent upon a country that could end up with huge tariffs. I enjoyed their actual breakdown of price by component, but I wasn’t so much concerned with the actual number... just that being “made” elsewhere was all the mattered.