Teardown analysis by iSuppli of Apple’s iPhone reveals Infineon Technologies, National Semiconductor and Balda provide key components in the device, along with established vendors such as Samsung Electronics. The iSuppli's teardown determined that the 8 Gbyte version of the iPhone has a total hardware bill-of-materials (BOM) and manufacturing cost of $265.83, generating a margin in excess of 55% on each unit sold at the $599.00 retail price, according to Andrew Rassweiler, principal analyst for iSuppli. In January, before iPhones were available for physical teardown, iSuppli estimated a $264.85 hardware BOM and manufacturing cost for the 8 Gbyte iPhone. These costs do not include royalties and logistics expenses.

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Infineon, a new supplier to the iPod family, was among the biggest winners in terms of semiconductor content. The German semiconductor supplier contributed the digital baseband, RF transceiver and power-management devices, providing much of the core communications capability of the iPhone. Altogether, Infineon's silicon content accounted for $15.25 worth of the iPhone's BOM, representing 6.1% of the 8 Gbyte version’s total cost.

National's contribution to the iPhone BOM is relatively small, with its lone chip in the product costing $1.50, which represents less than 1% of total product cost. However, the part--a serial display interface--represents an important design win for National, which has never had a part in an iPod. The chip, which connects the display to the graphics controller, uses National's Mobile Pixel Link standard, which the company has been attempting to promote for use in mobile devices.

It is believed by iSuppli that the supplier for the touchscreen module in the model torn down by iSuppli was Balda, with its partner TPK Holding. It is believed by iSuppli that the iPhone LCD display itself is multi-sourced through Epson Imaging Devices, Sharp and Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology. The cost of the LCD used in the iPhone is estimated at $24.50, representing 9.8% of the 8 Gbyte version's costs.

Samsung supplies the iPhone's applications processor, which includes an ARM RISC core. The processor costs $14.25 in both versions of the iPhone. The company also contributed the NAND flash memory and DRAM for the iPhone. In the 4 Gbyte version, Samsung has $24 worth of NAND flash, and $48 in the 8 GByte version. For both versions, Samsung supplies 1 Gbit of Double Data Rate SDRAM worth $14.00. Samsung has $76.25 worth of semiconductor content in the 8 Gbyte version of the iPhone, giving the company a 30.5% share of the product's hardware cost, the largest total of any single supplier.

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