I found this interesting piece on GigaOm and thought I’d share it with you. It doesn’t say how much money Apple is making off the iPhone though a quick math can give us a vague idea.
If it costs $180 to build an iPhone and Apple sells each unit to AT&T (or other carriers) at $550, then it makes a profit of $370 per unit sold.
$370 times 5.2 million iPhones sold in the third quarter of 2009 makes Apple a profit of $1,924,000,000 (for quarter 3 only). That’s almost 2 billion dollars in profits!!! To this, you have to subtract costs such as marketing, salaries, etc… but still, that’s a hell lot of money.
These are obviously rough numbers but they shouldn’t be too far from reality.
As you can see on the image below, it takes AT&T 2 years to make these $2 billion (in revenue, not profit). Apple is definitely cashing in…