The Plastic Samsung Galaxy S4 Costs More To Make Than An iPhone 5

(8:47 am PDT, Mar 20th)

image-via-ubergizmo

Its plastic chassis may feel cheaper than the iPhone 5’s glass-and-aluminum materials, but Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 smartphone actually costs significantly more to make. In fact, almost 20% more.

The reverse-engineering vivisectionists over at IHS iSuppli have broken down the Galaxy S4 into its base components, and have concluded that the total cost of making an S4 with 16GB of memory is around $244, 17% more than the iPhone 5 and 15% more than the Galaxy SIII.

That upgraded cost? It’s all in the specs.

“Among the upgrades are a larger, full high-definition display; a beefed-up Samsung processor; and a wealth of new sensors that set a record high for the number of such devices in a smartphone design,” said IHS senior analyst Vincent Leung in a statement.

Of course, one advantage that Samsung has over Apple is that even though Samsung is paying more to make the Galaxy S4, they are their own biggest component supplier, meaning that the majority of that money spent building each phone goes right back in their own pocket. Not a bad deal, huh?

The question is, how much will the Galaxy S4 cost? Samsung still hasn’t announced pricing, so how much of this increased build cost will end up being passed on to the consumer? We’re guessing not much, if any, but there’s a lot of questions about the S4 remaining before it launches in April.

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Comment »

  • TJ

    Considering the lackluster response, I assume they will need to keep it cheap and eat the profits.

  • http://twitter.com/gnomehole The Gnome

    At lest cheap plastic keeps the costs down and the device k-mart.

    • xared

      Then one might as well get an even cheaper phone with cheaper specs which doesnt make a difference playing temple run or whatever.
      Spec-koolaiders just dont know why they need quad/octa-core processors, GBs of RAM n all.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Steffen-Jobbs/100001574843303 Steffen Jobbs

    Yeah, but like the fAndroids always say, they can buy the 16GB model and then just stick in a 64 GB SD car to get all the memory in the world. Oh, yeah, and they can change the battery, too. The SGS4 might be made of plastic but the fanbois think it’s worth it because they’re not getting stiffed with Apple tax. Besides, most of the Android fanbois think plastic is a superior building material, so they don’t think Apple has any advantage.

    One thing for certain, being your own component supplier has its advantages. Apple needs to consider becoming more like Samsung with their huge overseas cash hoard doing practically nothing. It might eliminate some of those pesky supplier leaks which aren’t very helpful for Apple’s declining share price.

  • Jason R

    Apple can’t build components. If they did they’d be morally responsible for conditions in the factories, and held accountable, like we hold Samsung…. Never mind.

  • http://profiles.google.com/jayq330 Jonathan Oquendo

    And with ask that money going back into there pocket, not differing there own discounts, they couldn’t put a shred of metal, this article only shows how much cheaper they are &that the rumor of then siding the cheapest version of the 16 prototypes to be more a real fact than rumor.

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Android, as well as our sister site, Cult of Mac. He has written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with his charming inamorata and two tiny budgerigars punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous perverts. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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