Apple has plenty of breathing room to lower the price of its new iPad tablet computer if sales aren’t as brisk as hoped, research from iSuppli has suggested. Without taking apart an actual iPad, the El Segundo, Calif,.-based market-research firm concluded, based on Apple’s description of the device features, that the cheapest iPad model, the 16GB device without wireless 3G, contains $219.35 worth of parts and costs about $10 to assemble.
With a 3G card, the parts price rises to $246.45, and manufacturing rises slightly to $11.20. The expected retail price is $499 for the 16GB device without 3G and $629 with 3G.
For the most expensive models, iSuppli estimates the 64GB iPad costs Apple $307.85 in parts and $10 in labor, and $334.95 for parts and $11.20 for labor with 3G. The expected retail price is $699 without 3G and $829 with 3G.
The 32GB version of the iPad with 3G is the most profitable, according to iSuppli, with a parts and labor cost of $287.15, or about 39 percent of the $729 retail price. Without 3G, the 32GB device has an expected retail price of $599.
The most expensive component is the touchscreen, estimated at $80 for all models.
Apple didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment about the estimates.
Michael Gartenberg, a vice president of Interpret, said the estimates should be taken with a grain of salt.
“I’m a little skeptical of a tear-down that doesn’t actually include the hardware being torn down,” said Gartenberg. “But then again, we’ve had critiques by people who’ve never held the device as well.”
Jeff Orr, a mobile devices analyst at ABI Research, said the estimates are likely lower than the actual cost.
“This is one firm’s analysis of what they think the ‘bag of parts’ or ‘bill of materials’ cost is for the…