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Interesting, the cost breakdown to make an iPhone:
http://tinyurl.com/28v49e8
Somewhere else (I lost it now) they mention assembly costs are around $9.50.
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On 14/10/2010 12:02 PM, scott wrote:
> Interesting, the cost breakdown to make an iPhone:
Interesting indeed.
I note that with all the sophisticated technology in this device, the
single most expensive component is... the display?! (And that's not even
including the touch feature, just the actual display itself.) Closely
followed by... the flash RAM?? Everything else is peanuts compared to
these two items.
I'm quite surprised at how cheap some of the items are. You would have
thought the processor would be expensive... but no. (The RAM is more
expensive than the CPU?!) You would have thought the 5 megapixel camera
would be expensive... but no. You would have thought the custom battery
would be expensive... but yet again, no.
I'm also surprised at just how cheap the casing is; you would have
thought making something that can survive being sat on, dropped on the
pavement, rained on or flushed down a toilet would be very expensive.
But apparently not.
(Strictly, they list the cost of the materials, not the cost of actually
assembling them.)
I also note with some amusement that it has a 960x640 pixel screen.
That's slightly higher than the Amiga 1200 "Super-Hires Interlaced"
video mode, at 960x480 visible pixels. (Well what did you expect with <
that includes the backlight...)
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> I note that with all the sophisticated technology in this device, the
> single most expensive component is... the display?!
It's a nice display though :-)
> I'm also surprised at just how cheap the casing is; you would have thought
> making something that can survive being sat on, dropped on the pavement,
> rained on or flushed down a toilet would be very expensive. But apparently
> not.
Those parts are typically quite cheap to produce in high volume, once you
have the tooling done it's just injecting cheap plastic into a mould or
cutting and folding sheets of cheap metal.
> (Strictly, they list the cost of the materials, not the cost of actually
> assembling them.)
The list is the amount you pay to buy those components (which includes the
sub-assembly needed for those individual components), on top of that price
there is about another $10 to assemble that lot together into an iPhone.
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>> I note that with all the sophisticated technology in this device, the
>> single most expensive component is... the display?!
>
> It's a nice display though :-)
I saw an iPhone in real life for the very first time on Saturday. It is
actually a nice display. If you can see through all the fingerprints. ;-)
>> I'm also surprised at just how cheap the casing is; you would have
>> thought making something that can survive being sat on, dropped on the
>> pavement, rained on or flushed down a toilet would be very expensive.
>> But apparently not.
>
> Those parts are typically quite cheap to produce in high volume, once
> you have the tooling done it's just injecting cheap plastic into a mould
> or cutting and folding sheets of cheap metal.
If metal and plastic are "cheap", then why does everything get made out
of the most skimpy amounts of material the manufacturers can get away
with so that it's only just barely strong enough to not break?
>> (Strictly, they list the cost of the materials, not the cost of
>> actually assembling them.)
>
> The list is the amount you pay to buy those components (which includes
> the sub-assembly needed for those individual components), on top of that
> price there is about another $10 to assemble that lot together into an
> iPhone.
Now, see, I would have thought just surface-mounting the 2,157
individual resistors would cost more than $10... But what do I know
about anything?
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> If metal and plastic are "cheap", then why does everything get made out of
> the most skimpy amounts of material the manufacturers can get away with so
> that it's only just barely strong enough to not break?
Why waste money making it stronger and thicker than it reasonably needs to
be? Even just 5 or 10 cents extra spent on each iPhone would equal quite a
big amount of money overall.
> Now, see, I would have thought just surface-mounting the 2,157 individual
> resistors would cost more than $10... But what do I know about anything?
I suspect the cost of mounting the resistors can be worked out by the
depreciation of the SMD mounting machines over the lifetime of the product,
plus the cost of running the machine. It's surely not very much though,
given that you can buy loads of consumer devices with populated PCBs inside
them for well under $10.
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>> If metal and plastic are "cheap", then why does everything get made
>> out of the most skimpy amounts of material the manufacturers can get
>> away with so that it's only just barely strong enough to not break?
>
> Why waste money making it stronger and thicker than it reasonably needs
> to be? Even just 5 or 10 cents extra spent on each iPhone would equal
> quite a big amount of money overall.
Making something stronger than it needs to be would indeed be a waste of
money. But it seems that these days, everything is made *weaker* than it
actually should be.
Then again, maybe that's because I'm still thinking like a consumer.
When I buy something, I want it to *not* brake. The manufacturer, on the
other hand, has a vested interest in making it so flimsy that it won't
last 5 minutes. That way they get more repeat business. (In addition to
the materials savings, obviously.)
Personally it makes me angry that somebody would deliberately design
something to be defective so that they can make more money out of me.
But I guess we can put that down to market forces. There will always be
people who make expensive high-quality goods, and other people who make
cheap low-quality goods. What kinds of product you find in the shops
depends on what people buy the most of. And today's mentality seems to
be "buy the cheapest thing on the shelf, no matter how defective it is".
>> Now, see, I would have thought just surface-mounting the 2,157
>> individual resistors would cost more than $10... But what do I know
>> about anything?
>
> I suspect the cost of mounting the resistors can be worked out by the
> depreciation of the SMD mounting machines over the lifetime of the
> product, plus the cost of running the machine.
How about the cost of the resistors themselves?
Oh, mind you, that's already in the BoM...
> It's surely not very much
> though, given that you can buy loads of consumer devices with populated
> PCBs inside them for well under $10.
True. I have a 4GB flash RAM device in my pocket that cost 99p.
(I still don't understand why digital devices *need* thousands of
analogue components in them in the first place, but anyway...)
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> Then again, maybe that's because I'm still thinking like a consumer. When
> I buy something, I want it to *not* brake. The manufacturer, on the other
> hand, has a vested interest in making it so flimsy that it won't last 5
> minutes. That way they get more repeat business. (In addition to the
> materials savings, obviously.)
I think more people would steer away from a brand if it got a reputation for
breaking all the time, usually manufacturers have exact targets for how many
devices are returned failed after certain amounts of time. They are
carefully calculated (to produce a device that doesn't break too often, but
is also sensible to manufacture) and then the product is carefully designed
and tested to meet these targets. The bad reputations usually come from
mistakes rather than deliberate design intention. Still this is usually a
result of poor design/testing procedures, which are obviously related to
cost.
> Personally it makes me angry that somebody would deliberately design
> something to be defective so that they can make more money out of me.
I doubt anyone designs something intentionally to fail, no matter what it
might seem like as a consumer. It's quite hard to design something to be
fine within warranty but then to fail just after, you risk a huge
replacement bill if you try that tactic, plus you'll get a very bad
reputation.
> (I still don't understand why digital devices *need* thousands of analogue
> components in them in the first place, but anyway...)
On our boards nearly all of the discrete components are part of the power
supply or to round off the data signals to improve EMI/EMC performance.
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scott wrote:
> Interesting, the cost breakdown to make an iPhone:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/28v49e8
>
> Somewhere else (I lost it now) they mention assembly costs are around
> $9.50.
Tht's not the cost of making an iPhone. That's the cost of the hardware that
goes into making an iPhone. It leaves out stuff like patent licenses, and of
course the sunk design costs etc.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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On 10/14/2010 7:53 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Now, see, I would have thought just surface-mounting the 2,157
> individual resistors would cost more than $10... But what do I know
> about anything?
Well... once you buy the machine to do it, it doesn't really use too
much electricity (except, maybe the heater to keep the solder bath warm,
and only takes a few minutes to pick and place the components. But the
initial outlay for the cost of the machine is a high cost.
--
~Mike
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On 10/14/2010 9:46 AM, scott wrote:
> On our boards nearly all of the discrete components are part of the
> power supply or to round off the data signals to improve EMI/EMC
> performance.
[A large chunk of this response is mostly directed at invisible]
Right. Filtering the signals. Caps are used a lot of time in digital
circuits to prevent switching noise from corrupting signals via ground.
When some digital circuits (TTL in particular) switch they create a lot
of noise on the ground plane that must be dealt with. Too much
fluctuation between power and ground, and the circuit begins to behave
erratically. Also, its a good idea to limit current. Resistors are used
to stabilize signals, pull up or pull down an input or output, bleed off
excess voltage so FETs don't retain a charge, etc... You need RC
networks to run a clock crystal, etc... Just connecting together a pile
of digital components won't work. You need supporting components to make
sure everything is stable in the system, especially when dealing with
large-scale digital systems like an iPhone. Keep in mind, that device is
also going to require a oscillators and filters for the RF parts, as well.
It gets even more interesting when you start dealing with designing
circuit boards, where you actively need to avoid traces from running
parallel to each other for too much distance, lest they build a
parasitic capacitance between them. In systems with very tight voltage
and current tolerances, the length of traces and thickness of traces
becomes very important as well. Traces can also act as inductors.
Some of the discrete components may be in there to also counteract some
of these effects caused by the traces themselves on the board. You'll
notice caps and resistors will often be very close to the pins of an IC
to minimize any effect the circuit trace may have.
--
~Mike
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