iSuppli

Inside the Magic Trackpad

iFixit has done a teardown and found a couple moving parts but no magic unicorns

It took a heat gun, a hairdryer, guitar picks, a soldering iron, a spunger and tweezers, but the folks at iFixit managed to pry apart Apple's (AAPL) new $69 wireless trackpad.

"This not for the faint of heart," they write. "Thin and pretty = not user servicable"

But having reduced the thing to nine difficult-to-assemble parts, from MORE

How the PC market grew 22.7%

The fastest year-to-year growth since iSuppli starting tracking computer shipments in 2003

The charts say it all. Three Asian suppliers -- Acer, Lenovo and ASUS (from a small base) -- led the field. Apple (AAPL) and Toshiba were close behind. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Dell (DELL) grew more slowly.

In terms of market share, HP is still No. 1, but Acer is gaining fast, having passed Dell to reach the No. 2 spot. MORE

Apple can build a $500 iPad for $240

The mark-up for the mid-range model is more than 150%, according to iSuppli

Silicon Valley's teardown analysts these days don't even wait for the body to arrive before publishing their autopsy reports.

Case in point: the estimated bill-of-materials for Apple's (AAPL) iPad issued Wednesday by iSuppli, an El Segundo, Calif., company that specializes in so-called virtual teardowns.

Retail prices for the device, which is scheduled to start shipping in March, range from $499 MORE

iPhone triggers boom in flash memory

Thanks in large part to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone and the growing ranks of iPhone imitators, worldwide sales of NAND-type flash memory are expected to rise nearly six-fold from 2008 to 2013, according to a report by iSuppli Corp. issued Wednesday.

Global revenue from sales of NAND flash for mobile phones could hit $932.5 million in 2013, according to iSuppli, up from $166.5 million in 2008 -- a compound annual growth rate MORE

iSuppli: Smartphone sales could grow 11% in 2009

There's good and slightly less good news for Apple (AAPL) in a report issued by iSuppli on Wednesday.

Against a backdrop of slowing sales growth in the overall mobile handset market, the El Segundo, Calif.-based research firm sees a bright spot in smartphones.

The report offers two scenarios for 2009 and beyond. Its best-case forecast calls for global smartphone unit shipments of 192.3 million units in 2009, up 11.1% from 173.6 million MORE

iPhone profits: Apple cleared estimated $330 million in three days

That first weekend of iPhone 3G sales was a very profitable one for Apple (AAPL), based on some quick back-of-the envelope analysis.

We know from Apple that the company sold at least 1 million iPhones in those first three days. We know from a teardown published by iSuppli Monday roughly how much the phones cost to build. We know their retail price and have some pretty good estimates of how much MORE

Virtual teardown puts Apple's iPhone 3G margin at 56%

Even though none of the teardown shops has yet to get its hands on one of the new iPhones, we now have two estimates of how much the 8GB model costs Apple to build.

The first, from Austin-based Portelligent, put the Bill of Materials alone at $100. (see here)

The second, issued Tuesday by iSuppli in El Segundo, CA, is more detailed and probably more accurate. As shown in the chart below, MORE

NAND and demand: How the chips fall at Apple, Inc.

News out of overseas chip factories this week cuts both ways for Apple (AAPL), the world's No. 3 buyer of NAND flash memory.

The report getting the most attention -- and stirring the most controversy -- is the one published Wednesday by iSuppli Corp. Based on what chip makers are telling it, iSuppli is cutting its outlook for revenue growth in NAND flash memory (the chips used in MP3 players and MORE