November 15th, 2008 | by Rosemary.R |
Ever wonder just how much it costs to manufacture that expensive smartphone?? Well, I did…and after a bit of snooping I was quite surprised at the results. According to a virtual teardown by iSuppli Corp., the T-Mobile G1 carries a Bill-of-Materials (BOM) cost of $143.89.Â
iSuppli determined the $143.89 BOM based on information from its Mobile Handset Cost Model (MHCM), which provides detailed analysis of present and future expenses to build mobile phones with any possible feature set. This estimate includes only the component and material costs for the G1, and doesn’t account for other expenses including software, research and development, manufacturing and accessories. iSuppli hasn’t yet conducted an actual physical teardown of the G1.Â
The most costly segment of the G1 is the baseband, at $28.49, or 19.8 percent of the G1’s total BOM. Similar to other recent handsets from various brands examined by iSuppli, the baseband employs a combination of an ARM11 microprocessor for multimedia applications and an ARM7 core for modem functions.
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The next most costly section of the G1 is the display, at $19.67, or 13.7 percent of the BOM. The G1’s display is a 3.2-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with HVGA resolution, at 320 by 480 pixels. The display uses projective touch-screen technology.
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The camera represents the next most expensive segment, at $12.13, or 8.4 percent of total BOM costs. The camera has a 3 megapixel resolution and an autofocus feature.
The fourth most expensive segment is the Radio Frequency (RF)/Power Amplifier (PA) portion, which costs $9.84, representing 6.8 percent of the total BOM. This section supports a high-speed 3.5G network connection using the
HSDPA air standard.
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The T-Mobile G1 BOM makes the handset cheaper, in terms of parts costs, than the iPhone 3G, which is manufactured from $175 worth of parts. The
T-Mobile G1 could be netting HTC a higher profit-margin than the iPhone 3G does for Apple.
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