Research firm IHS: Apple Manages to Increase Their Profit Margin On New iPad Air

Research firm IHS: Apple Manages to Increase Their Profit Margin On New iPad Air 

Research firm IHS (via AllThingsD) is reporting that Apple has somehow managed to increase the profit margin on their new iPad Air tablet PC.

According to the report, Apple’s iPad Air costs between $274 and $361 to build, based on the model. Apple currently retails $499 for the base 16-gigabyte Wi-Fi only model up to $929 for a 128GB model with Wi-Fi plus cellular data service.

Key findings from the tear down according to Andrew Rassweiler, the analyst who oversees the teardown work at IHS’s lab in Los Angeles, include:

• All new display and touchscreen assembly. For one thing, it’s thinner and has fewer layers in the combined assembly than in previous models. But, at an estimated combined cost of $133 (about $90 for the display and $43 for the touchscreen parts), it’s a lot more expensive than before. South Korean electronics companies LG Display and Samsung are both thought to be suppliers of the display.
• For the touchscreen bit, there’s a new type of sensor known as a cyclic–olefin polymer sensor that sits underneath the outer layer of Gorilla Glass that users touch. What used to require two layers of glass, now requires only one. As a result, the whole assembly measures out to 1.8 millimeters thick, versus 2.23 millimeters on the third-generation model.
• There are also fewer LED lights providing the backlighting to the display than before.
• The brightness that once required 84 LED lights is now being accomplished with only 36.
• Apple is also using thin layers of optical film to distribute the light from the LEDs across the entire display. Fewer LEDs cuts down on the weight and the power drain to the battery.

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