BlackBerry Z10 costs $154 to build?

12 years ago

The BlackBerry Z10 could cost as much as $154 per unit to build, according to estimates by UBM Techinsights of Ottawa which did a tear down of the handset recently. By comparison, Apple’s 16GB iPhone 5 costs around $139.20 per unit to build, according to UBM.

UBM, however, stressed the figures are only estimates since it has not fully analyzed the BB Z10.

Image from UBM Techinsights

The BlackBerry Z10 retails for around $650 without a contract and about $140 on a three year contract in Canada.

UBM also found out that the phone considered by many as BlackBerry’s “Hail Mary” product, has a lot in common with Samsung’s Galaxy S III handset.

“When we took apart the BlackBerry Z10, the one thing that immediately stood out to us…was the number of familiar components we saw,” according to a report by UBM. “All in all, the BlackBerry Z10 seems to incorporate many of the component selections of the Samsung Galaxy S III LTE.”

For instance, the BB Z10 is powered by the same Qualcomm MSM8960 baseband/applications processor found in the Galaxy S III. The component, which UBM called a “design win”, is a power-efficient processor that is essential for battery management requirements of LTE-enabled phones.

This price list by UBM Techinsights shows how much iPhone 5 16GB parts costs compared to those of the BB Z10

The BB Z10 also uses Qualcomm’s PM8921 power management IC (found on Galaxy S III LTE and Galaxy Tab 2) and RTR8600 multi-mode transceiver and GPS (found in the S III LTE and 4th generation iPad).

Samsung also provided the BB Z10’s system memory (2 gigabytes of low power DDR2 SDRAM) and the usable memory for the 16 GB of NAND Flash, said UBM.

The features offered by the Canadian handset puts it at par with market leaders but fails to make a convincing differentiator, according to UBM.

“As it stands, this handset is going to be a huge leap forward for you if you are an existing BlackBerry user,” the UBM report said of the BB Z10. “…However, if you’ve already made the switch to an Android device or an iPhone, there’s really nothing here to make you want to come back, unless you really miss BB messenger.”

Read the full UBM Techinsights report here