What's the deal with phone prices, and why do the vast majority of flagships today cost more than $400? We get an answer to that thanks to a document that came to light thanks to the long-term patent war between Apple and Samsung. There, lawyers Joe Mueller, Tim Syrett and Intel's vice president, Ann Armstrong pointed to the fact that the high price of high-end phones is largely due to the price of patents and other license fees that companies have to pay to manufacture their products.
The document thus revealed that currently up to 30% of the average selling price of smartphones is made up only of license fees. The average price of phones at the end of last year was around $400, but currently the average price has dropped to $375. The document used as an example that phone manufacturers have to pay 60 dollars for each device produced just to certify the LTE technology, which at the same time justifies the seemingly meaningless price difference between devices with LTE support and devices without LTE support. The paradox is that manufacturers pay an average of 10 to 13 dollars for a processor today. So it can be seen that it is not easy to make a cheap device with powerful hardware. Especially if you are a large company and due to pressure from investors you have to maintain a high margin on your top models.
*Source: PhoneArena
