With its stylish and modern design, coupled with one of the best smartwatch interfaces, Apple’s Apple Watch won about 33% of the smartwatch market share in the first quarter of 2021. The latest Apple Watch Series 6 starts at a low price of US$399, but according to Counterpoint Research’s analysis, the manufacturing cost of this wearable device is only US$136.
Counterpoint Research calculated in a bill of materials (BoM) report that the cost of the application processor, display, sensor, and casing alone accounted for about 68% of the total cost of Apple Watch Series 6. Apple Watch Series 6 uses a regular Retina LTPO OLED display that provides a peak brightness of 1000 nits. But because the company cancelled the Force Touch function in this model, the overall BoM has dropped.
Apple not only added a more efficient processing unit to the S6, but also upgraded Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips. Including the 1GB fast LPDDR4X memory and 32GB onboard storage in the new Apple Watch Series 6, this part of the device accounts for 23.7% of the cost.
The large number of sensors in Apple Watch Series 6 only accounts for 6% of the material cost. Although Apple decided to cancel the ceramic version of Apple Watch Series 6 to reduce costs, the company has improved the performance of the speakers and Taptic Engine, plus wireless charging coils and batteries, these upgrades accounted for only 6% of the total cost.
As September approaches, Apple may release a new Apple Watch Series 7 smart watch, bringing a redesigned body and a large number of hardware, software and sensor upgrades.
