Google Nexus Parts Cost $174, Slightly Less Than iPhone 3GS
Google’s Nexus One, the Internet giant’s first entry into the self-branded cell phone arena, costs $174.15 to build, making it just slightly more expensive that its rival from Apple, the iPhone, according to a Monday report. The figure from iSuppli also indicates the build price of the Google handset is just $5 under the subsidized $179 customers pay for the device when agreeing to a two-year T-Mobile contract.
The Nexus One retails for $529 if purchased unlocked and without a carrier’s contract.
Combining a Snapdragon baseband process (the most expensive component at $30.50) and a $23.70 3.7-inch Active-Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode provides what iSuppli senior analyst Kevin Keller calls “the most advanced features of any smart phone” the company’s every torn-open.
In 2009, iSuppli found it cost $178.96 to build a 16GB version of Apple’s iPhone 3GS. In that review, Apple paid $24 for 16GB of memory from Toshiba, $19.25 for a 3.5-inch Toshiba display, and $13 for an Infineon processor. An 8GB iPhone 3G cost $174.33 to build, the company said.
Another costly component in the Google phone: memory. The company paid $20.40 for 512MB of DDR DRAM, 512MB of NAND flash memory and a 4GB MicroSD card – all from Samsung.
In a bit of irony, Andy Rubin, who lead the Android effort for Google, told author Ken Aluletta in Googled a smartphone “shouldn’t cost four hundred dollars. That’s absurd, if you add up all the components, somebody is making a lot of money.”
The iSuppli number do not include the expense of marketing, manufacturing, and preparing the phone for sale.
- Via Silcon Alley Insider and AppleInsider
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
