New iPad Air 2's Hardware Cost ‘Nearly Identical’ to Original’s, IHS Says

The new iPad Air 2 has a design and feature set that’s "only incrementally different" from the original iPad Air, so it carries "a nearly identical hardware cost as its predecessor," IHS said Wednesday in a teardown analysis. The 16-GB Wi-Fi-only version of the iPad Air 2 has a $270 bill of materials, IHS said its preliminary estimate found. When the $5 manufacturing cost is added, the cost rises to $275, it said. That’s compared with the $269 BOM for the 16-GB version of the original iPad Air, based on an IHS analysis done a year ago when that tablet was introduced, it said. "Although the profit margin appears to be the same for Apple at the low end of the iPad Air 2 line, the product produces lower gross margins for Apple at the high end with 64GB and 128GB worth of NAND flash," IHS said. "This is because the 64-GB and 128-GB models of iPad Air 2 are selling at the same price point as the original iPad Air 32-GB and 64-GB models. The additional cost of memory trims the estimated margins slightly."