A bizarre CNET post

CNET today posted a list of all the parts in the new iPhone 3GS, suggesting that the parts cost, including assembly is a bit under $180 for the 16 GIG phone. I find these kinds of stories counterproductive. A truism of any piece of technology, especially with the reality of Moore's Law, suggests that the value added of the device is fundamentally founded on the intellectual property of the phone not the components.

A key part of the argument by some on the left is the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US and the substitution of "service" jobs is fundamentally negative for the US economy. That is pure nonsense. Which has a better long term trend - manufacturing or service sector jobs that drive the manufacturing of products? Obviously, the brains that go into the phone are more important than the chips and other materials that come out to $180. Ultimately, the value of the intellectual property in the phone is conditioned in part on how long the model will last over how many phones are sold. In this case, the property spreads nicely over both models of the phone (32 and 16) and there is probably a lot of carryover for the next generation of phone. Indeed, the implementation of the better camera in the new phone probably took very little intellectual work to integrate it into the new model.