Apple makes twice the profit margins on U.S. iPhone sales as it does iPad

It appears that Apple is making huge profit margins on United States iPhone sales according to figures revealed in a court filing yesterday. Apple never reveals its profit margins on any of its products individually, for obvious reasons, so this revelation spotted by Reuters makes interesting reading.

Apple Inc earned gross margins of 49 to 58 percent on its U.S. iPhone sales between April 2010 and the end of March 2012.

Between October 2010 and the end of March 2012, Apple had gross margins of 23 to 32 percent on its U.S. iPad sales, which generated revenue of more than $13 billion for Apple, the filing said. Apple does not typically disclose profit margins on individual products.

The main difference with the iPhone compared to the iPad is the cell phone contract and the subsidies that the networks pay to Apple for each handset. This obviously must account for a large proportion of the increased profit margin on iPhone models. Or, conversely, Apple is forced to lower margins on the iPad to get it under $500 for the base model, since there's no one subsidizing those sales.

It will be very interesting to see how the alleged iPad mini would fit into the profit margin percentage range. If Apple is willing to accept half the profit margin on current iPads as it does iPhones, how low could they go for a 7-inch iPad? iMore has previously heard $200 is the floor. If Apple is willing to take a short term drop in profit to ensure long term gains in market share, it certainly looks like there's room to blow the competition out of the water all together.

And most importantly, unlike Google with the Nexus 7 and Amazon with the Kindle Fire, which are sold roughly at or below cost, Apple might still make money off the sales.

Love them or hate them, these court cases with Samsung are starting to reveal some really interesting information.

Source: Reuters