Samsung launched the Galaxy Z Fold 4 at an expensive $1,799.99, so it was a no-brainer that the cost of materials would have been high for the company to make a single unit. A new analysis compares the foldable flagship against the iPhone 14 Pro Max, and in terms of hardware costs, there is not a significant difference, especially with what Samsung offers to customers.
New data reveals that Samsung has to pay $670 to make one Galaxy Z Fold 4 unit
Fomalhaut Techno Solutions, a company based in Taiwan, provided a breakdown of the component costs for the Galaxy Z Fold 4. The analysis revealed that each of these devices cost Samsung $670 to make, with ITHome reporting that the bill of materials is less than 40 percent of the sales price.
Apple, on the other hand, has a material cost of $501 for the iPhone 14 Pro Max, with the figure being 46 percent of the total sales price. While a 33 percent material cost difference is massive, part of the reason why Samsung has narrowed the gap is due to the components getting mass-produced by the Korean giant itself, which makes its supply chain more reliable, and less expensive.
For the iPhone 14 Pro Max, the cost to make it was 20 percent more expensive than its direct predecessor, the iPhone 13 Pro Max, and it was due to the A16 Bionic’s price, with each unit costing the company $110 when sourced from TSMC. This makes the A16 Bionic twice as expensive as the A15 Bionic, and things are not going to get cheaper in 2023.
Even Samsung is expected to feel the price surge, as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 powering the upcoming Galaxy S23 series will likely be found in the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and the Galaxy Z Flip 5. The chipset is mass-produced on TSMC’s 4nm process, the same one used for the A16 Bionic, so naturally, it would have cost Qualcomm more, who will then pass those price increases to Samsung.
Even then, Apple could pay more for the A17 Bionic meant for the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Ultra, as the next-generation SoC is said to be made on TSMC’s cutting-edge 3nm architecture. With TSMC rumored to increase wafer prices past the $20,000 threshold, the top-tier iPhone 15 models could be more costly to make than the Galaxy Z Fold 5.
If that is the case, we will provide more comparisons, but only when additional analyses like this are published, so stay tuned.
