Piper Jaffray’s people got their hands on a calculator, who ever thought such a simple device could be a weapon wielded against large companies? Anyways they did some math and found an interesting number, $565, that’s roughly how much Apple makes off of an iPhone with 2-year contract with AT&T.

They got that number buy taking the retail price of the iPhone, $399, adding the roughly $18 per month Apple makes from iPhone contracts, and then subtracting the $265 that iSuppli estimates each iPhone costs to make. Well, now we know why it was so easy for Jobs to drop the iPhone price by a couple hundred dollars, sure it was a loss, but the 90 some odd thousand iPhones he sold the 3 days after probably went a long way towards making up for that.

Most people, me included, could care less how much they profit off of it as long as the price stays reasonable and they keep making a great product. Now if they would just stop bricking so many of them that would be great too.

Apple profits half a grand per iPhone [via valleywag]