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The figure has been released by iSuppli, which obtained a handset on the release day only to strip it to pieces and tot up the cost of its components.

The company claims that the 8GB version of the phone costs $174.33 to build.

The low cost is partly due to the fact that Apple has focused on refining the iPhone from the previous model, specifying comparable but now cheaper parts rather than developing an entirely new design with extra features.

"The addition of 3G wireless capability represents an evolutionary design step for the iPhone, not a revolutionary one,"

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says Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager and principal analyst at iSuppli.

"iSuppli believes Apple aimed for a more cost-effective design for the 3G iPhone compared to the 2G, in order to lower the retail price - which will allow the company to seed adoption and to capture maximum market share now - while the company still has buzz and a perceived differentiation relative to its competitors."

However, the figure fails to take into account the cost of packaging and distributing the phones around the world, as well as the considerable development costs. Each unit sold also costs Apple an estimated $50 in IP royalties on existing patents.

In the US the handset is sold for $199, and AT&T is rumoured to be paying a $300 subsidy on each sale, giving a total sale price for Apple of $499. This would give the company a profit margin of around 55% - far higher than most manufacturers enjoy.

The company will be destroying more handsets in the near future in order to check that parts are supplied from the same company for all units. The 8GB NAND chip, for example, is manufactured by Toshiba, but could equally have been sourced from Samsung.