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iPhone woman

Flickr/Kristal Kraft

An iPhone would have cost $3.5 million to build back in 1991,  according to back-of-the-envelope-math by TechPolicyDaily.  

Here's how the site reached that astronomical sum:

  • GB flash memory: $45,000 in 1991 vs. $0.55 today.
  • Thus, 32GB flash memory = $1.44 million.
  • Apple's processor, which produces about 20,500 millions of instructions per second: $620,000 in 1991.
  • The cost of mobile communication in 1991: $100 per kilobit per second.
  • The iPhone delivers speeds in the 15Mbps range today: 15,000Kbps (15Mbps) x $100 = $1.5 million.

Add those rough numbers ($1.44 million + $620,000 + $1.5 million) and you get $3.56 million. TechPoliceDaily also points out that sum doesn't even account for the iPhone's camera, operating system, display, apps, or motion detectors. 

Wow.

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Jillian was most recently an enterprise technology editor based in San Francisco.  She started at Insider as an intern on the technology desk in 2013 and rose to a senior reporter position, covering Alphabet, Facebook, and ecommerce. After three years at the site, she left to spend time freelance writing abroad, before taking reporting positions at CNBC and then at Forbes, where she covered Alphabet, Silicon Valley culture, and artificial intelligence. She returned to Insider in March 2020 and worked on the enterprise technology desk until August 2021.  Jillian graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications with a degree in magazine journalism and information management and technology.