Do you know that an estimate of components which is called a ‘bill of materials (BoM)’ actually reveals how much margin a smartphone maker is charging on sales of each unit. In September 2017, we found out that Apple iPhone X has a BoM of around ~$400 which is just 40% of its street price and the same goes for the newly released Samsung Galaxy S10+.
Experts at TechInsights got their hands on Samsung Galaxy S10+ (8GB) for scrutiny. As per their cost estimation which excludes the cost of marketing and advertising, research and development and other factors, Samsung Galaxy S10+ has a BoM of just $420 which is merely 42% of what the unit cost in the market.
According to the cost estimates, the most expensive component is the dual punch-hole AMOLED curved front-display at $86.50 followed by the in-house Exynos 9820 SoC at $70.50. However, the Exynos 9820 SoC is still $10 cheaper than the Exynos 9810 10nm used in Galaxy S9+ thanks to the dropping wafer prices and the inclusion of 8nm manufacturing process to develop Exynos 9820 SoC that promises improve efficiency and performance even after a flat-out $10 discount on each unit.
Further, a 128GB microSD card that comes with Galaxy S10+ cost just $12 under ‘Supporting Material’ cost along with the total cost of memory i.e. $50.50 within which, the South Korean brand was able to manage sticking a base internal storage variant from 64GB in S9+ to 128GB and inclusion of a +2GB LPDDR4X RAM and that’s all without increasing the cost at all.
Finally, the 4,100 mAh battery mounted on Galaxy S10+ cost a mere $10.50 which is way less than what its replacement will cost in case if you need one. Finally, the triple camera array at the back and dual-camera setup at the front costs a mere $56.50 combined that takes the total to just $420 BoM. You can read more about it here.
