iSuppli: Droid Incredible Materials Cost $165.35
In their latest findings from those entertaining teardowns we hate to watch (but somehow still love to see), iSuppli determined that all of the materials needed to make one HTC Droid Incredible incurs a bill of $165.35. While I don’t agree with iSuppli’s Andrew Rassweiler on the Droid Incredible being a “Nexus Two” candidate (they’re similar, but we would expect Google’s successor to their original “superphone” to innovate just as much as it did the first time), it’s definitely a worthy replacement for the now-retired Nexus One (retired from Google’s warehouse, anyway).
That said, I anticipate a few comments asking “well why does it cost so much if the materials cost less than the subsidized price?” Don’t forget that there’s a lot involved in the production process: manufacturing, assembly, software design and adaptation, testing (software and hardware-based), marketing, distribution, licensing, etc. There are a lot of moving parts to creating any device that will ultimately drive its costs far past the cost of materials.