According to iSuppli buying all the parts for the new Wi-Fi only iPad with 16 GByte only sets Apple back USD 259.60 (est. CHF 272.60). The best about it is, this price already includes the manufacturing costs.

By far the most expensive part of the iPad is its display and everything related to it. It causes 40 percent of its Bill of Materials (BOM). Included in these 40 percent are the display itself, touch screen, and user interface components.

Andrew Rassweiler, doctor and principal analyst from iSuppli said that conventional notebooks are "motherbaord-centric" where all the bits and pieces are attached to the central processing unit.
With the iPad this is almost completely different. The CPU isn't that important. "With the iPad the concept is reversed. Everything is human-machine-interface-centric. PCB and ICs (Integrated Circuits) are all here to make displaying the content as user friendly as possible".

If we do some easy calculations we see that Apples per iPad earns USD 189.40 (est. CHF 198.90). In other words the company with the best marketing department earns about 45 percent from every single piece they sell.

Source: Telecomasia.net

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