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Report: iPhone 13 Pro costs more to produce than the iPhone 12 Pro

A teardown analysis by TechInsights shows that the iPhone 13 Pro has a higher build cost when compared to the iPhone 12 Pro. The report says that the semiconductor shortage affected the iPhone 13 production as the A15 Bionic cost more to produce, as well as the NAND memory, the display subsystem price, and an increase in the main enclosure cost.

TechInsights also compared the iPhone 13 Pro and the iPhone 12 Pro with the Samsung Galaxy S21+, which was less expensive than Apple’s iPhones to build.

We have completed the QTT cost analysis and estimate the sub-6 GHz iPhone 13 Pro A2636 has a higher build cost when compared to last year’s iPhone 12 Pro A2341 mmWave model. The increased total cost is due to the higher estimated costs for the A15 processor, NAND memory, the display subsystem price, and an increase in the main enclosure cost, which impacted the total Non-electronic cost. We also compared the new iPhone 13 Pro with the competitive sub-6 GHz Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G mobile phone (normalizing the NAND size to 256 GB).

As you can see in the image below, the iPhone 13 Pro’s estimated cost was around $570, while the iPhone 12 Pro was $548.50, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S21+ for an estimated cost of $508. It’s important to note that all models have 256GB of storage.

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TechInsights makes an analysis of all the components and what else changed within the new iPhones as well. From Apple, the iPhone 13 Pro with 256GB costs $1,099, which means, Apple charges two times more than it takes to produce it. These production costs, however, don’t factor in things like research and development.

The iPhone 13 can be really expensive in certain countries, such as Brazil and Turkey.

While production costs went up for the iPhone 13 Pro, Apple is heavily promoting the new iPhone with aggressive carrier deals in the US. It’s not difficult for customers to get a massive discount on their iPhone 13, or even to get it for free.

You can read the full TechInsights report here.

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