When Steve Jobs and Apple comes up to the whole world and tells it that the new Apple iPad will sell for about $499 for 16 gigabytes, have you ever wondered how much it actually costs to make?

The thing is, different gadgets will use different components to make, and will ultimately decide how much the final product will cost. An Apple iPod Shuffle isn’t going to cost as much as an iPhone, just because of the simple fact that the Shuffle uses less components, and, therefore, ‘costs’ less.

But that isn’t all there is to it. Market research firm iSuppli actually breaks down popular gadgets to their raw parts, and provides an estimate as to how much gadgets’ components cost – effectively providing an estimate as to how much a gadget should cost. As iSuppli’s findings show, gadget prices aren’t just about components.

Some manufacturers, such as Sony, are actually willing to shoulder some loss to sell their products. Take the Playstation 3 for instance. Given that the Sony PS3 houses a very powerful computer, and thus, great processing power (it’s even been used to create supercomputers), the 20GB PS3 actually costs more or less $805 to make – but Sony is willing to let it go for only $499. Sony assumes that they’ll gain back the deficit in subsequent sales, maybe in game peripherals and game sales.

Apple, on the other hand, is a different story. Apple’s products are able to sell themselves at a profit from the start, most probably because of the nature of its market. But on closer inspection, there are differences even inside a single company: the Apple iPhone sells for almost as much as it costs to make, but the Apple iPad carries with it a very huge markup. Surprised?

For the whole rundown of devices and gadgets, click here to view the complete slideshow from BusinessWeek.

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