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New iPad more expensive to make and is the heat problem with it really ture?
IHS iSuppli took apart a new iPad on Friday, the day the device went on sale in the US and nine other countries, and found that the components are more expensive than those of the iPad 2.The third iPad comes in several versions starting at $499, the same price as the iPad 2 at launch.Apple has priced all three generations of the tablet aggressively, making it hard for competitors to match its features at the same price.It makes less from each iPad than from each iPhone.As a whole, Apple is wildly profitable, earning $33 billion in net income on $81 billion in revenue in the last calendar year.ISuppli said a new iPad with 32 gigabytes of RAM and a cellular modem, which costs $729 in stores, costs $364.35 to manufacture.That’s 9 per cent more than the $335 it cost to make the corresponding iPad 2 a year ago, when it came out.The corresponding version of the first iPad cost about $276 to make in 2010, according to iSuppli’s estimate.The higher-resolution display and the larger battery needed to support it are the main reasons the new iPad is more expensive than the iPad 2.It has four times as many pixels as the iPad 2′s screen. ISuppli estimates the display costs Apple $87, plus $40 for the touch-sensitive layer.The new iPad battery has 70 per cent more capacity, but the new display consumes all that additional power, so the battery life is the same as for the old model.Also contributing to the cost increase is the new cellular modem in some models. It can use faster ”4G LTE” networks in the US and Canada.Samsung Electronics Co. remains the largest single supplier of iPad components. It made the display in the unit iSuppli examined and it supplies all iPad processors.ISuppli suspects Samsung also made the battery and supplies flash storage memory for some versions of the new iPad.In fact, half of the new iPad’s ”bill of materials” may be for Samsung components, iSuppli said.Apple and Samsung don’t comment on their business relationships.Samsung also makes its own tablets and they have succeeded better than most competitors.ISuppli’s cost estimate does not include packaging or overhead costs like design, marketing and software.will the new iPad have a heat problem?Heat has come up as an issue with previous generations of iPads. So, that's not news. But the new iPad may have, in select cases, its own unique heat problems.User forum postings (here and here) and a report seem to point to heat as an issue for select users.The problem area--based on forum links above--seems to be a hot-spot in the corner of the unit.In the worst case, the iPad shuts down and a message pops up, saying "the iPad needs to cool down," according to a Next Web report (link above).That seems to be extremely rare, however. And one user who claimed to have the problem was using it in direct sunlight. Let's be clear: that can cause problems for any electronic device.The third-generation iPad integrates both a larger battery and a faster (and reportedly larger) chip. Those are significant differences from the iPad 2. So, it inevitably gets warm. And like all Apple iOS mobile products it does not have a fan.
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