5G, redesigned, OLED in all devices: Apple should be up to 26 Percent more for the components of the iPhone 12 in autumn 2020. That emerges from a freshly published analysis by the market researcher Counterpoint. The “Bill of Materials” (BoM) is significantly more expensive than the iPhone 11 of the year 2019.

mmWave particularly expensive The calculations refer to the basic model of the iPhone 12, the Apple with 128 GByte delivered – in the version with mmWave technology, which is only available in the United States of America. According to Counterpoint, production costs Apple up to 431 US dollars. Even with the sub-6 GHz model for Europe and other markets outside of Apple’s home country, the BoM costs are around 18 Percent higher.

Smaller savings through a simplified radio frequency (RF) design of 27 Dollars are eaten up by further new components, so that here too there is a cost plus – of 18 percent – compared to the iPhone 11 results.

A 14 with almost 12 Billion transistors Counterpoint expects that 38 Percentage of models sold come with mmWave. This is a plus across the entire iPhone 12 of 18 percent of BoM costs. The new SoC Apple A 14, the 5G baseband, the screen and the 5G RF components in the foreground.

Counterpoint estimates that the A 14, which is being built for Apple for the first time in the 5 nm process by the manufacturer TSMC from Taiwan, 17 dollar is more expensive than the A 13. After all, he has 39 percent more transistors (now 11, 8 billion) and the 5 nm wafer costs are almost twice as high as in the 7 nm Process.

Apple’s cost base for the iPhone 12 Looks at the screens Counterpoint on the iPhone 12 a plus of 23 dollars per unit. For the first time, Apple is also installing OLED screens in its cheaper models; the iPhone 11 were still using almost borderless LCDs. It is positive for Apple’s cost base that the group has been able to further diversify its suppliers. The NAND flash module comes from Toshiba (KIOXIA) or Samsung, the LPDDR4X RAM from SK Hynix or Micron and the camera technology from Sony, LG Innotek and Sharp. TI and ST are the most important suppliers of battery management components and technology for power supply. A new system-in-package design allows the components to be miniaturized even further.

Before Counterpoint, the Japanese business newspaper also had Nikkei dared a BoM estimate – here, however, also for the iPhone 12 Per. There they spoke of the total cost of 128 dollars for the iPhone 12 and 406 Dollars for the iPhone 12 Pro – lower than the values ​​used by Counterpoint. The iPhone 12 is made by Apple in Germany for 900 Euro sold. (bsc)