Revealed: Cost to build iPhone 15 Pro Max explains its hefty £1,199 price tag

• The 15 Pro Max model is more expensive than its iPhone 14 Pro Max predecessor
• At £460, its cost to build is up by 12 per cent on the version released last year 

The long-awaited iPhone 15 was finally unveiled last month, with fans quick to get their hands on the newest models from Apple.

The price for the standard phone begins at £799 ($799 plus tax), meanwhile the iPhone 15 Pro will cost £999 ($999 plus tax) and the larger pro Max will set you back £1,199 ($1,199 plus tax).

While the standard and Pro models come in at the same price that the iPhone 14 equivalents cost upon their release the previous year, the 15 Pro Max is £100 (and $100) more expensive than its predecessor – a nine per cent price hike.

But the reported cost to build this flagship device may justify the rise, with the 15 Pro Max 12 per cent pricier to put together.

This is down to the array of new features, not least the company’s first ever tetraprism 5x telephoto camera.

A breakdown of the cost of the new iPhone 15 Pro Max shows why it is being sold at £100 more expensive than a new 14 Pro Max a year ago – with the new model starting from £1,199 ($1,199)

The deconstruction found that an iPhone 15 Pro Max costs Apple $558 (£460) in total to make, up 12 per cent from the production cost of the 14 Pro Max. Pictured: deconstructed iPhone 5

The all-new tetraprism 5x telephoto camera (above) was one of the key contributors to this price rise, worth 3.8 times the value of the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s camera

A cost breakdown by Nikkei found that the constituent parts of the new iPhone 15 Pro Max add up to cost Apple $558 (£460) – 47 per cent of what they sell them for before tax.

Piece-by-piece analysis estimated that the screen cost 10 per cent more on the new model compared to the 14 Pro Max, while the titanium frame of the 15 Pro Max pushed up that part’s cost by 43 per cent.

The new A17 Pro chip processor costs 27 per cent more than the A16 Bionic used in the 14 Pro Max.

READ MORE: Apple CEO Tim Cook explains why people should buy a new iPhone every year

One of the most widely publicised upgrades on the new phone was its updated camera, which is reportedly worth 3.8 times more than the previous edition.

This increased cost also translates to the other iPhone 15 models, although not quite so markedly, with the Pro coming in at eight per cent more expensive to put together than the 14 Pro, and the iPhone 15 Plus costing roughly 10 per cent more than its predecessor.

However, the biggest relative price increase is in the base model, despite its unchanged price since the iPhone 14 was new a year ago.

An iPhone 15 apparently costs Apple $423 (£349) to make – 16 per cent more than the 14 – making it arguably the best value of the range.

It also has the highest cost-to-price ratio of the iPhone 15 range, with the base model costing Apple 53 per cent of the eventual sales cost to make, compared to 49 per cent for the 15 Plus, 52 per cent for the 15 Pro and 47 per cent for the 15 Pro Max. 

MailOnline has contacted Apple for comment about these figures. 

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