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From: Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com>
Newsgroups: misc.phone.mobile.iphone,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Apple tacitly admits their CPUs and new Modem are merely a marketing gimmick
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2025 13:26:56 +1300
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On 2025-02-22 23:05:27 +0000, -hh said:
> On 2/22/25 15:57, Your Name wrote:
>> On 2025-02-22 11:38:58 +0000, -hh said:
>>> On 2/21/25 18:24, Alan wrote:
>>>> On 2025-02-21 13:08, Your Name wrote:
>>>>> On 2025-02-21 15:15:28 +0000, Rick said:
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> There is an easy solution here.  If you don't like the product, don't buy it.
>>> 
>>> Bingo.
>>> 
>>>>> The fact is that nobody in the real world gives a damn nor will ever 
>>>>> notice any supposed slowness. It's only the tech geeks and the odd 
>>>>> extreme high end user that might be bothered at all. Computers and 
>>>>> devices reached peak speed and efficiency for 90%+ of users years ago 
>>>>> and it's now become little more than annual updates for the sake of the 
>>>>> companies making more money.
>>>> 
>>>> Especially when one of the features Apple's modem doesn't have isn't 
>>>> anywhere NEAR universal yet.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Pretty much my thoughts as well.  I looked at that design trade-off as 
>>> being a reasonably good one:  the modem in question lacks the one 
>>> niche cellular band that's shortest range & has limited deployment, so 
>>> it might connectivity when at a stadium concert 1x/year, but it being 
>>> ~1% more power efficient helps me every day when I leave my home's WiFi.
>>> 
>>> In any event, there's more things than just geekery to criticize the 
>>> new iPhone 16E about.  Since the Apple modem is to not pay Qualcomm's 
>>> high chip licensing costs, then why did the price jump up by so much? 
>>> For the $170 increase from $429 to $599 is a whopping +40%.  Tariffs?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -hh
>> 
>> Trump the Chump's idiotic tarriffs may well be one reason, as is the 
>> on- going general price rises of almost everything, including shipping 
>> and raw materials, but there are also a few updated specs compared to 
>> the out-going iPhone SE:
>>  �- newer / faster CPU
> 
> Silicone wafers are cheap, so once the new mask is done for the 
> flagship phone, the question of the manufacturing cost of the (A14 vs 
> A15 vs) is pragmatically close to zero...or even negative, once you've 
> done the manufacturing technology to improve yields (I was on one just 
> one such project a few years ago ... we dropped cost from just under 
> $50/unit to $8.xx).

The actual cost is mostly irrelevant. Anything newer is usually priced 
more than the old one if the old one is still being sold. That's partly 
due to the necessity of recouping the R&D costs and manufacturing 
set-up involved, but also partly due to the perceived "worth more".




>> �- more RAM (needed for the useless Apple Intelligence gimmick)
> 
> The material's cheap and the long term trend is down.  A quick Google 
> suggests a manufacturer cost of $4 per GB, so the increase from 4GB to 
> 8GB is all of a ~$16 manufacturing increase.

Manfacturing for normal RAM, yes. The price to upgrade the RAM and 
storage when building-to-order Apple devices has always been rather 
horrendous (although not as bad as getting simple wheels for a Mac 
Pro!), not helped now that the RAM is on the CPU itself.

You can't build-to-order the RAM on the iPhone (any model), but to 
upgrade the storage jumps considerably. Doubling the storage from 128GB 
to 256GB jumps the price by US$100. Quadruple the storage from 128GB to 
512GB bumps the price by US$300.




>> �- higher resolution rear camera
> 
> Still is just a single aperture camera.

Yes, but higher resolution. Again, newer equals higher price.



>> �- larger / OLED display
> 
>  From the existing parts bin, right?

Newer (and this case also sligthly bigger) equals higher price.



>> (There are of course also a few small things now missing, such as the 
>> home button.)
> 
> Sure.
> 
> 
>> It may also be partly due to where the new model is being made - India 
>> for example may be a little more expensive than China (which of course 
>> is becoming more and more of a "no-no" for the conspiracy nutters in 
>> some governments).
> 
> Sure, but of what magnitude of cost per unit?  Some years ago, I had a 
> conversation on manufacturing offshoring with a Dell executive while at 
> a funeral; TL;DR they admitted that when Dell sent PC assembly from the 
> USA to China, their cost savings was around just $20/unit.  A decade 
> ago, epi.org reported the assembly cost was ~$15 (2%), so assuming that 
> this cost doubled due to India, +2% on a $500 iPhone is +$10. That's 
> not nothing, but its also not a big smoking gun for a $140 price 
> increase.
> 
> 
> 
> -hh

The actual manufacturing costs aren't really relevant in that sense. 
Simply adding up the wholesale cost (usually guessed) of the parts for 
anything from any company will always be far less than the consumer 
pays in the shop. The iPhone 15 was price at US$1199 in store, but 
reportedly only costs US$502 in parts. It will be similar for devices 
from Samsung, Google, Sony, Mazda, Toyota, etc., etc. (I recently had 
to get a new part for my car, a tiny little rubber stopper which cost 
me about US$7 and probably only costs pennies to make.

As above, there will be lots of things that combine to cause the price 
increase - manufacturing costs, shipping costs, material costs, 
advertising costs, simple inflation, currency exchange rates, salary 
increases (especially for managers), etc., etc. No doubt the price 
increase was also part of the reason they decided to no longer use the 
"iPhone SE" branding.