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gacook gacook is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jyl View Post
That is a common and completely incorrect belief.

The great majority of the iPhone's economic value goes to the US.

Here is the iPhone 5's bill of materials.

Groundbreaking iPhone 5s Carries $199 BOM and Manufacturing Cost, IHS Teardown Reveals - IHS Technology

Of the $750 price of the phone, $550 is profit for Apple, that pays for its employees who are overwhelmingly in the US.

$200 goes to various makers of semiconductors and other components. Almost all of those are made in semiconductor fabs in Taiwan (TSMC etc) or Korea (Samsung etc) with package/ test done in various countries including China. Roughly half of those chips are sold by US semiconductor companies (Qualcomm, Broadcom, Cerus, etc) so their profit margin (60% or so) goes to pay for their mostly-US employees. The battery, case, and a few minor chips are from China.

$7 is the packaging and the accessories in the box (AC adapter, earbuds, cable). That comes from China.

Assembly is $8. That is done in China.

So basically, about 70-75% of an iPhone's value flows to the US, about 5-10% to China, the rest to Taiwan and Korea.

The iPhone is awesome for the US. We need more products like that, not fewer.
IMHO, that's a huge part of the problem right there. $750 for a phone--a PHONE!! Not to mention the fact that 73% of that price is pure profit...
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Old 06-02-2014, 09:50 AM
  Pelican Parts Catalog | Tech Articles | Promos & Specials    Reply With Quote #50 (permalink)