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Apple Watch S6 BOM is $136
 
Counterpoint conducted a BOM analysis of the Apple Watch, S6, which comes with an Always-On Retina LTPO OLED screen, supporting 1,000 nits of peak brightness. Apple’s exclusion of the Force Touch gasket in this model, while keeping the BoM cost down, makes the watch a bit slimmer by 0.3 mm compared to the earlier generation. Display and the touch module, along with the strengthened ION-X glass, amount to slightly over 13.2% of the total device BoM.

• The new S6 SIP (System-in-Package), which Apple claims is 20% faster than the S5, features dual cores that are based on the A13’s energy-efficient “little” Thunder cores running at 1.8 GHz. 
• Apple’s W3 chip handling the wireless part includes dual-band Wi-Fi support and Bluetooth 5.0. 
• U1 chip based on the ARM Cortex architecture, built on the 16nm FinFet Process. The U1 (ultrawideband chip) allows for a precise location tracking. The S6 module includes 1GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 32GB (SK Hynix) of onboard memory. 
• The S6 SIP module, DRAM and memory add up to 23.7% of the overall cost.
• The vast array of sensors includes an accelerometer with fall detection, third-generation optical heart rate sensor, blood oxygen sensor, gyroscope, altimeter and an ambient light sensor. These sensors together make up around 12% of the total BoM cost.
• Apple claims the speaker is 50% louder than the S5. 
• The Digital Crown provides haptic feedback with the help of the Taptic engine. This engine takes up around 35% of the space inside Apple Watch. The latest Taptic engine is more robust compared to the former. With the battery size amounting to 303.8 mAh, it is a minor increase of about 7.8mAh from the previous Series 5. 
• Apple provides fast charging in the Series 6. Battery and the wireless charging coil in the smartwatch amount to about 6% of the total BoM cost.
• The casing and body materials remain the same, including the body crown, metal frame, rear cover made of aluminum/stainless steel, ceramic/sapphire crystal back, and stainless-steel frame. Together these make up around 13.3% of the BoM cost.
• Waterproofing is identical to the previous model with an ISO rating of 22810:2010 up to 50 meters. Other passive components like analog, discrete ICs and switches are, remarkably, not that expensive.

 
Apple opted not to launch the ceramic model for this variant. Ceramic is known for its hardness and is virtually scratch proof overall, but it is a more brittle material compared to titanium. Apple dropped ceramic because it is a bit more expensive to manufacture.
 
The core functionality of Series 6 is the same as that of Series 5 after the addition of the always-on altimeter and blood oxygen sensor, brighter display, minor upgrade to the battery, and fast charging capability. The miniaturization of components and their tight integration is increasing the price. In September, Apple is expected to release the S7 with a redesigned body and a plethora of hardware, software and sensor upgrades.
 
The lowest cost Apple Watch S6 is $400, putting the market-up on the BOM at ~4x. A μLED display with a comparable resolution of 448x368, would need 500,000 µLEDs at $0.0000424 each (assuming LED production, binning and transfer yields better than 93% each, without any transfer costs, to match the OLED price.  Doubling the display cost would raise the price by ~$150 to $650, for Apple to maintain its gross margin. Display Daily published a report by Ken Werner with one data point on the speed of transporting µLEDs for a 12.3- display containing 518,400 µLEDs. Assembly took 10 minutes using fluid assemble at a rate of 3.1 million devices per hour. The company, eLux, reported only 34 failing subpixels, of which 33 could be laser repaired to achieve after repair defectivity approaching one part per million. Of the 34 defective sites 19 were caused by shorted µLEDs.