The iPhone 4S

[Icyculyr]

Wow, what awesome powers of perception. Well no sh.. Sherlock. The article is almost 6 years old, those would have been the top (or at least higher end) components at that time.

What on earth are you talking about? I'm well aware how old that article is and that's my point. Those may have been high-end components at that time, but it still isn't comparable considering you don't know what they were exactly and what the prices are of the components in the 2011 iMac.

You can't compare a six year old iMac to a (e.g) 2011 model and expect to get some kind of idea about what profit Apple is making on the latter.

I (and probably every economist in the world) do: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/...fit-an-iphone/ [not on the price of parts but on the final markup before retail sales]

So, what you're saying is that others don't do R&D and don't pay their employees?! Apple had almost $500.000 per employ profit last year, while others, like Qualcomm (which, if you ask me, has to do a LOT more R&D than Apple) had about $200K, RIM had $230K and so on. Well, that must mean that they research & develop the hell out of it there at Apple.

No, I was talking about all companies (EDIT: smartphone manufactuers, I should say), not Apple specifically. They all do lots of R&D and have to pay their employee's, all that stuff costs a fair bit.