Apple will make less money per unit on the new iPad, will still rake it in though

Based on some educated estimations made by analysts at UBM TechInsights, a 16GB 4G LTE variant of Apple’s newest iPad should work out to about $310 in components.

This makes it the most expensive iPad Apple have had to manufacture to date, with the equivalent iPad 2 costing $276.27 and the original iPad costing $270.86 in parts.

Of all the components going into the new iPad, the much talked about new Retina Display seems to rack up the largest part of the bill with that 9.7-inches of IPS goodness estimated to cost around $70 a pop.

The new bumper sized battery too is on the pricey side at $30 and the touchscreen is thought to cost in the vicinity of $25. The internals are estimated to cost as follows: $28 for the A5X chip, $16 for the NAND flash storage, $12.50 for the camera unit, $8.50 for the SDRAM and $7 for the WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS radios.

One thing that many noted is that despite the battery (and by proxy the physical size of the new iPad) growing from 6580mAh to an impressive 11,180mAh, the new components such as the 1GB of RAM, the new display and of course the new LTE radio mean that battery life couldn’t be improved over its predecessor.

Jeff Brown, UBS TechInsights’ Senior Analyst had this to say, “The bottom line is the new iPad’s margin should take a little hit because of some of the expensive adders like LTE, the high-res display and camera, a bigger battery and faster processor.”

So with the estimated costs of the new iPad providing Apple with 51% margin and the price-dropped iPad 2 with 53%, per-unit the company in Cupertino isn’t going to make the same money it was able to previously. That being said, this is Apple we’re talking about, they will no doubt continue to sell an unprecedented amount of iPad’s and once every new user opens the App Store, things are only going to get better for Apple.

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