Research analyst firm, UBM Techinsights, published a report last week that puts the bill of material for the new Apple iPhone 5 at around $167.50 (£103) or roughly $35 (£21) higher than an equivalent iPhone 4S, based on a virtual tear-down.

At just over £100, the cost of the components is less than a fifth of the price of the phone itself. The 16GB iPhone 5 will retail for £529, the 32GB model for £629 and the 64GB version for £699.

According to Techinsights, all components have seen a rise in price except for the battery, the camera and the NAND (storage).

The display and the touchscreen components rose from $21.50 to $25.50 (£13 to £16) while the cost of the processor – which is widely rumoured to be either a quad-core A9 or based on the Cortex-A15 - rose from $21 to $28 (£13 to £17) while the cost of the Qualcommm Gobi baseband chip crept up from $14 (£9) to $25 (£15), the biggest increase of all the parts.

The cost of the smartphone excludes any third-party licenses, cost of assembling the device, packaging, developing the software, research and development and marketing costs.

Source: UBM Techinsights