Another day, another iSuppli teardown. The folks at iSuppli have found that the iPhone 4, according to their estimates, costs $188 to make. While this is almost comically low, it says something about Apple’s ability to mass produce phones and the high margins they’re able to make on relatively low-cost products.

The gyroscope chip, for example, apparently costs Apple $2.60 while it costs $2.90 in quantities of 200,000. These disparities pop up in a number of places, which, sadly, lends an air of WTF to the proceedings.

Incidentally, iSuppli is well-known for low-balling these numbers in an effort to convince manufacturers to contact them in order to connect with their preferred suppliers, so grains of salt must be taken.

However, $188 should be right as Apple tends to aim for a $180-$190 number in practice when manufacturing their iPhones.

In related news, iFixIt is now selling almost all the replacement parts you could want for your iPhone so you can build our own device at home, even further undercutting Apple’s dreaded hegemony.

via Businessweek