HTC's Droid Incredible Costs $163 to Make

The Droid Incredible, a smartphone manufactured by HTC Corp., has materials that cost $163.35, according to a teardown analysis of the phone conducted by iSuppli Corp.

The Incredible, which has been available for sale online from Verizon Wireless (VZW, VOD), is expected to make its debut at Verizon stores on Aug. 3 for $199 with a contract. It runs Google's (GOOG) Android operating system.

The iSuppli analysis released July 29 found that internally the Incredible is similar to a prior Android phone, the Nexus One, which Taiwan-based HTC built for Google. Google stopped selling the Nexus One on July 21. "There are so many commonalities between the Incredible and the Nexus One, and some of the other Android phones we're looking at, it's pretty clear the manufacturers are following some of the same basic design guidelines," says iSuppli analyst Andrew Rassweiler, who supervised the teardown.

For example, both use the same Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon wireless chip in combination with the same touchscreen controller chip from Atmel (ATML), a San Jose-based chipmaker. "What we think is that there's a reference design, which is like a basic recipe, suggesting that if you use this chip in combination with another chip, you end up with a cool smartphone," Rassweiler says.