Report: iPhone 13 Pro costs $20 more to build than iPhone 12 Pro despite being the same price

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Iphone 13 Pro Sierra Blue Hero
Iphone 13 Pro Sierra Blue Hero (Image credit: Christine Romero-Chan / iMore)

What you need to know

  • Apple's iPhone 13 Pro reportedly costs around $20 more to build than iPhone 12 Pro.
  • iPhone 13 Pro costs the same amount of money as its predecessor despite costing more to make.

A new report claims that Apple's brand-new iPhone 13 costs around $20 more to build than the outgoing iPhone 12 Pro. That despite the fact that Apple sells the newer model for the same price as the old one.

According to data shared by TechInsights, Apple's new flagship device costs around $570 to build, whereas last year's model took less than $550 to put together.

It's likely that the additional costs came from the improved cameras, ProMotion display, and larger batteries not to mention the improved A15 Bionic chip. Apple's iPhone 13 PRo also costs considerably more than Samsung's own offering in the form of the Galaxy S21+.

We have completed the QTT cost analysis and estimate the sub-6 GHz iPhone 13 Pro A2636 has a higher build cost when compared to last year's iPhone 12 Pro A2341 mmWave model. The increased total cost is due to the higher estimated costs for the A15 processor, NAND memory, the display subsystem price, and an increase in the main enclosure cost, which impacted the total Non-electronic cost. We also compared the new iPhone 13 Pro with the competitive sub-6 GHz Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G mobile phone (normalizing the NAND size to 256 GB).

While many might have expected Apple to pass the additional costs onto the customer, that doesn't seem to be the case here. Apple sells the new iPhone 13 Pro for the same $999 that iPhone 12 Pro also started at.

The new iPhone 13 lineup consists of the best iPhones Apple has ever made, until next year at least. Let's hope that iPhone 14 doesn't see a price increase next time around.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.