Boldly going where no mark-up has gone before

While the Tame Apple Press is trying to convince you that the iPhone X is packed full of new technology, it appears that it only cost Jobs’ Mob $100 extra to make.

While other iPhones tended to cost about $270 to make and retail for $600, the Iphone X cost $370 and yet sells for double the cost of the old model.

Engineers at marketing research firm IHS Markit cracked open the base version iPhone X,. After preliminary physical dissection, the firm estimated that the iPhone X carries a bill of materials of $370.

Wayne Lam, principal analyst for mobile devices and networks at IHS Markit, said Apple appeared to have set an aspirational starting price that suggests its flagship is intended for an even more premium class of smartphones.

The teardown of the iPhone X revealed that its IR camera is supplied by Sony/Foxconn while the silicon is provided by ST Microelectronics.

The flood illuminator is an IR emitter from Texas Instruments that's assembled on top of an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) detector from ST Microelectronics. Finisar and Philips manufacture the dot projector.

IHS Markit puts the rollup BOM cost for the TrueDepth sensor cluster at $16.70.

In comparison, Samsung's Galaxy S8 with 64 GB of NAND memory has a BOM of $302 and retails at around $720.

Apple appears to have jacked in similar technology from Microsoft’s defunct Kinect according to Jérémie Bouchaud, senior director for MEMS and sensors at IHS Markit.

“Apple’s Face ID system is very similar in basic functionality to the old Microsoft Kinect system of sensing, which used a flood illuminator, dot projector and infrared camera. It’s a complex assembly that uses components from many suppliers.”

With the price of general every day living, I am surprised people are so willing to shell out such a high $ amount for a phone. Completely baffles me