This might not seem like news to your typical Apple fan, but here we go: Apple's iPad Mini doesn't cost all that much to build ? almost half the cost of the device itself goes to the bill of materials, or the cost of the electronic parts and pieces that go into the iPad Mini itself. The rest? Right into Apple's coffers.
IHS, previously known among tech circles as iSuppli, has been conducting teardowns and cost analyses on various electronics for some time now. Since the iPad Mini officially hit store shelves this Friday, IHS has been working to disassemble and price out Apple's latest tablet.
And the results? It costs Apple approximately $188 to build a standard, Wi-Fi-only, 16-gigabyte iPad Mini. For reference, Apple sells this version of the device for a retail price of $329, or a $141 profit.
When additional memory is thrown into the mix to create Apple's other two iterations of the iPad Mini, the retail cost jumps up to $429 and $529 for the 32-gigabyte and 64-gigabyte versions, respectively. However, the total cost to add this additional memory from a manufacturing standpoint isn't very high. According to AllThingsD's Arik Hesseldahl, Apple's profits jump an extra $90 for the 32-gigabyte version of the iPad Mini and $162 for the 64-gigabyte tablet.
In contrast, Google's 16-gigabyte Nexus 7 only generates approximately $40 in profit for the company once the estimated cost of its components, $159.25, is subtracted from its $200 asking price. While we haven't run into a teardown and price estimate for Amazon's Kindle HD, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has stated that the company sells the device at break-even pricing. In other words, Amazon's looking to profit from post-ownership purchases, not from sales of its tablet hardware itself.
However, a report by UBM TechInsights suggests that Amazon was at least able to tighten up the design of the Kindle Fire HD such that the company does ultimately make a profit on the hardware. Analysts for UBM have pegged the total cost of materials for the seven-inch Kindle Fire HD at approximately $148, allegedly giving Amazon a lot more profit than it was able to achieve with its original Kindle Fire, which actually cost the company a small amount for each device sold.
For additional information about the parts found inside Apple's iPad Mini, be sure to check out some of the other teardowns that have been performed on company's latest tablet.
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For more tech tidbits from David Murphy, follow him on Facebook or Twitter (@thedavidmurphy).
Source: http://feeds.ziffdavis.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/breakingnews/~3/8h-5RzT42Z0/0,2817,2411709,00.asp
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