Smartphones are complex devices. Their flexibility means that for every generation, manufacturers must make trade-offs that represent how they think they can best meet users’ changing priorities at the lowest production cost. The charts below provide a breakdown of the portions of the total cost due to different components for Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy series of phones, provided by analysis company Teardown.com. These reveal both changes in the costs of underlying technologies and where manufacturers are investing in boosting the capabilities of their phones. For more details, including absolute costs, visit the interactive version of this article online.
This article originally appeared in print as “The Smartphone Recipe.”