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IHS teardown reveals Galaxy S7 costs Samsung $255 to build

An as-yet-unpublished report from IHS has revealed that Samsung pays around $255 in component and build costs per Galaxy S7 unit. As noted by Re/code, that’s pretty much the same as it cost Sammy to build the Galaxy S5 a couple of years ago, clearly indicating that high-end materials are dropping in price.

Amazingly, the most expensive single component inside the Galaxy S7 is Qualcomm’s latest flagship processor. The quad-core Snapdragon 820 processor costs Samsung $62 according to IHS’ teardown and analysis. That’s almost a quarter of the entire phone’s combined component and build cost.

In the US, Samsung sells the Galaxy S7 unsubsidized for $670. That’s $415 more than it costs the Korean tech giant to build the phone’s hardware. Of course, the $255 component and build cost doesn’t take in to account the amount of money Sammy pays for marketing, software or R&D, and isn’t anything like the full cost involved in making and releasing the phone. However, it does suggest that Samsung will be making a healthy profit on each phone sold, provided it doesn’t end up with tons of back-logged stock due to overestimating demand.

It also goes without saying that build and component costs will undoubtedly differ (albeit not by much) for the Exynos chip-equipped models on sale in most other global markets. As far as we know, the Snapdragon 820 versions are only available officially in China, US and Japan. Every other market where the phone is sold has the Exynos 8890 processor inside.

The camera unit is another component mentioned specifically in Re/code‘s report, and is another which will differ depending on the device. As we discovered last week, some units ship with a Sony sensor, while others use one made by Samsung. Still, IHS states that the camera unit in the new Sammy phones costs the company $13.70 each.

No other components were specifically mentioned, but we expect they will be revealed in IHS’ full report when it’s published later today.

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