Samsung's Flagship Phone Costs $50 More Than Apple's, but Retails for $50 Less, IHS Teardown Finds

April 16, 2015 |Smartphones

The cost for Samsung to double the memory of its Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge smartphones to 64 GB is $13 -- and $26 for doubling it again to 128 GB -- but the cost to consumers is $100 for each memory step up, according to IHS’ teardown of the Galaxy S line. The Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge with 64 GB of NAND memory carries a bill of materials (BOM) of $290.45, including the $5.60 manufacturing cost, IHS said, compared with the $799 retail price for the S6 Edge at Verizon. That’s higher than the BOM for a comparable iPhone 6 Plus 64 GB, which has a BOM of $240.05, including the $4.01 manufacturing cost. But at $849, Apple’s online store price for the 6 Plus 64 GB model is $50 higher than the comparable S6 Edge, IHS said. Samsung’s most recent Galaxy S series is its “priciest” to date, IHS said. “Samsung seems to have consistently packed more features and cost into their flagship Galaxy S line of phones over the last three generations of product, now producing a BOM cost that is notably higher than comparable iPhones,” said Andrew Rassweiler, IHS senior director-research and analysis. The top cost driver of the Samsung S6 series is the homegrown Super AMOLED display with Quad HD resolution (2560 x 1440 pixels), which compares with the iPhone 6 Plus’s 1920 x 1080 HD resolution, IHS said. The Edge’s curved display costs $85, about $24 more than the display for the regular version of the S6, and roughly double the cost of the iPhone 6 Plus, which IHS estimated at $41 in November. Other notable Galaxy S6 components' costs, according to IHS: Samsung octa-core, 64-bit apps processor ($29.50), Qualcomm baseband multimode processor ($15), Samsung 64 GB NAND memory ($25), Samsung 3 GB SDRAM memory ($27.50), 16-megapixel rear camera module ($18.50) and 5-megapixel front-camera module ($3). IHS said different carriers in different markets see varying versions of the S6 that don’t use the Qualcomm chipset, and it has procured another model to compare cost differences.