Apple is often accused of selling the iPhone at a price that is too expensive. Now, for the iPhone 13 Pro, how do the component prices compare to the selling price of the device?
TechInsights disassembles the 256GB version of the iPhone 13 Pro calculating the price of the components inside. It turns out that their findings are unique, because there are other cellphones whose component prices and selling prices are higher than the iPhone 13 Pro.
iPhone 13 Pro uses 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM (not the newer LPDDR5). Then between the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro at a glance, they use the same GPU, but Apple says that the standard variant of the GPU only has four cores, while the Pro variant has a five-core GPU.
Then in the camera sector, the iPhone 13 has a main camera measuring 1.7 microns, aka bigger than the iPhone 12 which has a main camera of 1.4 microns. While the Pro variant has a 1.9 micron camera, it's a far cry from the 12 Pro which has a 1.4 micron camera.
Then TechInsights also dismantled the notch on the iPhone 13 Pro, showing the camera scheme and various sensors in the smaller notch.
The iPhone 13 Pro uses a more expensive chip, NAND memory, and display. Likewise with a body that is more expensive than the iPhone 12 Pro. In total, the components in the iPhone 13 Pro cost USD 570, of course not including development costs, software, patents, human resources, and shipping costs.
The iPhone 13 Pro 256GB itself retails for USD 1,099 in the United States, or 1.9x more than the cost of the components. While the iPhone 12 Pro component price is USD 548.
When compared to the Galaxy S21 Plus 256GB, the component price is USD 508, and the price in the US for the 8GB RAM variant is USD 1,049, or slightly over double the price of the components, 2.06x to be exact.
But it must be remembered, the price of the components mentioned above is really the base price, because there are many other costs that are not visible in the development of a mobile phone. One of them of course is the cost of research and development.
