Cost To Build iPad Under $260

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

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Apple’s (AAPL) cost to build its new iPad is extraordinarily low compared to what the firm charges consumers. iSuppli, a research firm which analyzes hardware expense of goods, estimates the total cost to build an iPad is $259.60.

iSuppli reports that the cost of the touchscreen for the iPad is $95 and the processor expense is $28.60 according to an analysis of the data done by Bloomberg.

The $259.60 estimate from iSuppli is for the $499 version of the iPad. The $699 version has a cost of goods of $348.10.

The information shows how profitable the new product could be for Apple. Some analysts expect the consumer electronics company to sell 10 million of the tablets of the next year. That would bring Apple $5 billion in revenue and $2.5  billion in gross income. In its last fiscal year, Apple had revenue of $39.6 billion and a gross operating profit of $13.8 billion. Those numbers mean that the iPad could have a substantial effect on Apple’s earnings by early next year

If the growth of the iPad is on a trajectory that is anything close to the iPhone, the device could meaningfully alter Apple’s earnings improvement over the next three years.

No wonder the market has given Apple a $217 billion market cap. It is growing like a weed.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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