iSuppli has done a virtual teardown of the iPhone 5 to estimate its cost of production and the cost for the Bill of Materials (BOM) starts at $200.
The low end 16GB variant of the iPhone 5 costs $207 ($199 according to a preliminary virtual teardown $8 manufacturing cost) to make, whereas the mid-range 32GB variant costs $217 to manufacture ($209 BOM $8 manufacturing cost), and the high end 64GB variant of the iPhone costs $238 to make ($230 BOM $8 manufacturing cost).
You can take a look at the detailed breakdown of the cost of manufacturing the iPhone 5 below:
Andrew Rassweiler, senior principal analyst, teardown services says, “With the base model carrying a $199.00 BOM, the iPhone 5’s components are expected to be slightly more expensive compared to the iPhone 4S model. The low-end iPhone 4S with the same memory density as the base-model iPhone 5 carried a BOM of $188.00, according to a preliminary estimate issued by IHS in October 2011. While the price of some components, such as NAND flash, has fallen during the past year, the iPhone 5’s overall BOM has increased mainly because its display and wireless subsystems are more expensive compared to the iPhone 4S.”
iSuppli goes on to say, “As in previous models, the costliest subsystem in the iPhone 5 is estimated to be the display with integrated, in-cell touch sensing. At $44.00, this subsystem is pricier than the combined total of $37.00 for the iPhone 4S display with separate touchscreen based on pricing from October 2011. This is due to the iPhone 5’s larger display—at 4.0 inches diagonally, compared to 3.5 inches for the iPhone 4S—and the inclusion of the new in-cell touchscreen technology”
Another increase in cost is of course, the new A6 processor that resides in the iPhone 5. The A6 costs $17.50 as compared to the $15 A5 processor that resides in the iPhone 4S.
The exact clock speed of the A6 processor is not known, but benchmark scores revealed online is that the device has a 1.02GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. You can read that report here.