Apple's new iPhone 8 Plus carries a bill of materials (BOM) cost that's higher than any previous version of the iPhone according to a preliminary estimate from IHS Markit.
In other words, it's the most expensive iPhone to build to date (excluding the upcoming iPhone X).
A teardown from the analytics firm estimates that an iPhone 8 Plus with 64GB of RAM costs roughly $288.08 in materials. After tacking on $7.36 for basic manufacturing, the total is pushed to $295.44 which is $17.78 higher than that of the iPhone 7 Plus.
The smaller iPhone 8, meanwhile, carries an estimated BOM of $247.51, or $9.57 higher than the iPhone 7 when it was released.
Andrew Rassweiler, senior director of cost benchmarking services for IHS Markit, said that from a teardown perspective, the biggest cost adders for the iPhone 8 Plus would be the increased amount of RAM and the new wireless charging components.
To help offset some of the added costs, Apple has increased the introductory price of its new iPhones. The iPhone 8 with 64GB of memory starts at $699 - that's $50 more than the starting price for last year's iPhone 7. The bigger Plus model commands at least $799, a premium of $30 compared to the cheapest iPhone 7 Plus at launch.
Limited supply and heavy demand for NAND flash has been driving costs up all year.
Lead image courtesy Sarah Tew, CNET