iSupply has done an analysis of the iPhone 3GS and estimates that the bill of material and the assembly cost about $179 (iPhone 3GS 16GB). That doesn’t take into account other things like marketing, shipping and R&D.
The cost is very comparable to the iPhone 3G 8GB model that iSupply previously looked at , although one would believe that the component prices for that other model went down (a little) as well.
That’s the wonderful thing with electronics: it gets faster and better – or much cheaper, pressuring tech companies to go ever faster in a race against devaluation that ultimately benefit the end user. More details in the full post.