BlackBerry Storm Costs More To Make Than iPhone
iSuppli recently performed a teardown on the BlackBerry Storm, which essentially means taking apart the device and investigating its components, and found it costs roughly $203 to manufacture the BlackBerry Storm. That $203 consists of $186 for components and other material and about $16 for manufacturing. The total price to manufacture the Storm clocks in at about $27 more than it costs RIM to produce the BlackBerry Bold 9000, its high-end 3G smartphone.
Conversely, iSuppli found in July that it costs Apple roughly $174 to build and produce an 8-GB model of the iPhone 3G, more than $28 less than the BlackBerry Storm.
The BlackBerry Storm, however, does have more moving parts, with iSuppli noting that a total of 1,177 components make up the BlackBerry Storm, 151 of which are mechanical. The iPhone 3G ties together 1,116 components.
"The Storm, when compared with the Apple iPhone 3G, is marginally more expensive and complex in terms of sheer component count," iSuppli noted.
While the difference in cost to produce the devices isn't massive, it illustrates that RIM could be taking a hit on the device, which Verizon offers for $249 with a two-year contract and a $50 rebate, bringing the consumer cost to $199—less than it costs to produce the smartphone. The $199 price point is the same as Apple's 8-GB iPhone 3G.
iSuppli added that the BlackBerry Storm teardown revealed some interesting developments, such as the inclusion of a Qualcomm baseband chip, the first time a Qualcomm processor has been found inside a RIM device. That component, the Qualcomm MSM7600, represents $34.82, or more than 17 percent of the Storm's total component cost. Qualcomm also added two RF transceivers and a power management integrated circuit. Other notable components in the Storm include a touch-screen overlay from Synaptics, an 8-GB microSD card from SanDisk, and a multichip package from Samsung Electronics.
iSuppli did note that the $203 takes into consideration all parts and manufacturing costs but excludes additional expenses like intellectual property, royalties, licensing fees, software, shipping, logistics marketing and other channel costs.
While iSuppli confirmed many similarities between the two touch-screen titans, e-mail, GPS and an integrated camera; there were a few key differences in the devices' makeup, namely the BlackBerry Storm's "clickable" touch-screen, a 3.25-inch 480 x 360 full-color TFT-LCD display.
"The touch screen and the resulting user interface represent the focal point of the Storm's design from the user's point of view, as it is with the iPhone," Andrew Rassweiler, principal analyst, teardown services manager, for iSuppli, said in a statement. "However, RIM has added a special differentiating feature from the iPhone: the 'clickable' screen. The one thing that existing touch screens lack is the feedback mechanism users get from a conventional keyboard that clicks when a key is depressed, letting you know quickly your choice has been registered. Clearly, RIM felt this was lacking and added an actual physical button that allows users to feel and hear a click when they make a selection on the display."
Still, the BlackBerry Storm falls short when compared to the iPhone's multitouch technology, for which Apple just recently won a patent.
"While the Storm is very competitive with the iPhone in terms of features and hardware, it does not have iPhone's multitouch technology," Tina Teng, senior analyst, wireless communications, for iSuppli, said in a statement. "The Storm uses a simple physical button under the primary touch screen to serve to provide haptic feedback. This allows one physical key press at a time, meaning there is no double-tapping capability with the Storm."
The Storm also wins out with its ability to roam with more global operators than the iPhone due to its EvDO support along with support for CDMA 2000, GSM, WCDMA and HSDPA.
The BlackBerry Storm vs. Apple iPhone kerfuffle has been taking center stage of late, when The Wall Street Journal indicated the Storm was off to a rocky start, selling only 500,000 in its first month, compared with the iPhone's 2.4 million in its first quarter. Verizon Wireless, however, quickly fought back, telling Computer World that 1 million BlackBerry Storm devices have been sold since it officially launched on Nov. 21.