BlackBerry Storm teardown reveals $203 worth of parts

According to iSuppli, the cool cats that live to shed insight on the total dollar value of components in electronic devices, RIM’s BlackBerry Storm has about $203 worth of mediocrity jammed into its bulky frame. Want some specifics? $15 for the SurePress screen, $35 for the Qualcomm MSM7600 and $13 for the 3.2 megapixel shooter. $203 might not sound like too much, but it’s significantly more than the $169 of the Bold or the $174 of the iPhone 3G when you consider how many of these things are being churned out. Now we’re not too sure how these three phones would rank if we were to include the money spent on R&D, shipping, packaging, training, patents, etc, etc, into the costs of each handset, but we’re willing to wager that the Storm would be a pretty strong candidate for number one given that RIM shifted its entire focus this year from the Bold to the Storm and has spent vast sums of money on advertising and lavish launch parties. The silver lining? As time goes on RIM will be able to save a lot in production costs considering how many Storms were (allegedly) returned in the infancy of its life cycle thus giving them a vast supply of refurbs. And cue iPhone vs Storm nerd fight part MCCXLIV in the comments.

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