Build your own iPhone 3G: just £87

Think Apple’s iPhone 3G is over-priced at £99? Then save yourself £12 by building your own.

If you head on over to AppleInsider today, you’ll find a detailed breakdown of the manufacturers, parts and costs of the various hardware elements that form an iPhone 3G; with the raw facts and figures coming from research outfit iSuppli. Just buy all those bits and a tube of glue, stick them together and bingo – your own, home-made iPhone for just £87. It won't be tied to an 18-month O2 contract, either.

Of course, you’ll also need to shell £25 or so for patents and intellectual property rights. That brings the figure to build an 8GB iPhone in at around, er, £112. And that's before you've bought any airtime. Perhaps O2’s £99 subsidised deal isn’t so bad after all.

Indeed, from iSuppli’s analysis of the iPhone channel over in the US, it sounds like it is Apple, and not the networks, that is getting the better part of the deal. According to AppleInsider, the assumed cost of an 8GB iPhone 3G without a subsidy is US$499 (about £249). With US network AT&T flogging the iPhone 3G at a subsidised price of US$199 (£99), Apple is estimated to be receiving US$300 (£150) for each iPhone 3G sold.

AppleInsider reckons this is sufficient for a 55 percent profit margin, though its math(s) seems a little dodgy to us. Besides, once other costs are factored in – R&D, distribution, marketing, support – Apple will not making the substantial profits you’ll doubtless today hear being bandied about elsewhere.

[via AppleInsider via iSuppli]