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The cost benchmarking team at analyst firm IHS Markit has dissected an iPhone Xs Max in order to estimate the cost of components. For the 64GB version the team has calculated an estimated total bill of material (BOM) $ 390, a $ 20 increase from the smaller, previous-generation iPhone X.
With a starting price of $ 1,099 at the retail end of the supply chain this $ 20 increase in component cost translates into a $ 100 increase of retail pricing, however. As a comparison, Samsung’s Galaxy S9+ with 64GB of RAM has a BOM of $ 375.80 and retails at around $ 840.
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The total cost of camera components inside the new iPhone models (the iPhone Xs and Xs Max use the exact same camera components) amounts to $ 51.10. This estimated total includes the two cameras on the rear of the device, the front-facing camera and the TrueDepth sensor used for FaceID, Apple’s face recognition feature. Without the TrueDepth module, the cost of the two 12-megapixel cameras on the rear of the camera and the 7-megapixel front-facing camera comes out to an estimated price tag of $ 37.60.
Combined, all of the camera components inside iPhone Xs and Xs Max devices represent approximately 13 percent of the total BOM, showing camera technology is becoming even more important on newer smartphones. On the single-camera iPhone 7 from 2016 the total cost of all camera components was only 9.6 percent of the total.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)