After Samsung discarded plastic exteriors to be incorporated to its flagship smartphones and started adding a premium design to its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, the South Korean phone giant might have anticipated that it would have increased overall manufacturing costs. According to Recode, the 64 GB variant of Galaxy S6 Edge device built for Verizon Wireless' network costs around about $290 to build, including parts and assembly, which makes it approximately $34 per unit higher compared to the costs of Samsung's previous flagship phone, Galaxy S5.
The website states that according to the metrics calculated by HIS, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus cost $247 and $263 respectively, including parts and assembly. Currently, Samsung's Galaxy S6 Edge 64 GB variant is retailing for $699 off-contract. According to Andrew Rassweiler, who is an analyst stationed at IHS and responsible for the firm's teardown research efforts, states that:
"Samsung is clearly studying Apple's playbook by using things like metal enclosures and other design choices that are similar to Apple's. The bottom line is that this phone costs less than an iPhone to buy, but it costs Samsung more to build."
The curved side of the smartphone ends up being the most expensive to incorporate. Rassweiler has stated that the total cost stemming from the display and touchscreen elements mounts to $85 for Samsung. The second most expensive component happens to be the company's home grown Exynos 7420 SoC. The chipset costs an estimated $29.50 to manufacturer, which is still a huge difference between the curved screen. Since the 'system of a chip' has been processed on a superior architecture (14 nm FinFET), it will automatically raise those costs.
The only other firm that is rolling out processors manufactured on the 14 nm process is Intel, who is supplying its Broadwell and upcoming Skylake lineup of CPUs. The third most expensive component is the DDR4 memory, which costs $27 for the entire 3 GB. Both large screen iPhones have been incorporated with DDR3 type memory modules.
