A recent analysis conducted by Tech Insights dives deep into the production costs of the Samsung Galaxy S10+ model, namely the variant equipped with the Exynos 9820 chipset and 128GB of built-in storage. According to new calculations, every Galaxy S10+ base model that comes out of Samsung’s factory costs $420. This price covers the components themselves, testing, assembly, and supporting materials.
The source breaks down the production costs in numerous categories, including the silicon like chipsets and modems, the battery, connectivity and sensors, the cameras as well as the display and more. Interestingly despite it being a newer model, it looks like some components have allowed the OEM to lower the production costs in some areas (but not overall) compared to the Galaxy S9+, even though these components are better than last year.
For example, the Exynos 9820 chipset built on 8nm technology is cheaper than the previous Exynos 9810 SoC built on 10nm technology because wafer pricing has dropped over the past ten months or so. Additionally, the drop in memory prices across the industry has allowed the OEM to include 128GB of storage in the base model, as opposed to 64GB from last year, all of this without suffering an increase in production costs in this particular category.
On the other hand, the smartphone’s display area has increased and this year the Galaxy S10 series has a punch-hole display notch, so the costs for the panel was bumped up by around $9 compared to last year. Nevertheless, Samsung still afforded to include a 128GB microSD card in the package, which raises the ‘Supporting Material’ costs by around $12.
The 4,100mAh battery at the heart of the device added $10.50 to the final production price, while other components related to connectivity and sensors – presumably including the optical-based fingerprint sensor- cost $14.
Effectively, the largest part of the production costs was covered by the display, which accounts for around $86.50 total, followed by the AP and modems which cost around $70.50. Connectivity and sensors are the third most costly category, followed by the battery.
Overall, the Samsung Galaxy S10+ costs $420 to produce, while in contrast, the Samsung Galaxy S9+ launched last year cost around $379 according to a previous analysis by Tech Insights. The full cost breakdown can be seen in the image gallery below.
These costs don’t seem to cover the marketing budget or other expenses, but nevertheless, Samsung seems to be making a hefty profit for every Galaxy S10+ unit sold, considering that the base model has a launch price of $999. That’s roughly 140-percent return this year per every sold unit, compared to around 120-percent return for last year’s Samsung Galaxy S9+.
The analysis doesn’t yet cover the production costs of the Samsung Galaxy S10+ model powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset, or the other variant equipped with 512GB of built-in storage which carries a price tag of $1,249. Likewise, the paper doesn’t touch on the possible production costs for the model said to launch later down the line, which will house 1TB of built-in storage and 12GB of RAM.
The Samsung Galaxy S10+ is presently available for pre-order and is expected to ship to customers later this week beginning with March 8.
