I'm not sure any of this is true. I'd be very surprised if the die size of any iterations of iPhone have been larger than Intel dies. Intel uses more than a billion transistors on even its simplest CPUs.
No doubt. To be more clear, I was comparing the lithography process, ie. it seems likely that the A8 will be on a 20nm process, however the new Intel Broadwell chips would be using a 14nm process. Although this is somewhat unfair, as Broadwell has been delayed until next year, whereas the A8 should be available very soon (if not already), this is the comparison the poster I was responding to was making.
Also, MBP CPUs aren't much at the low end.. somewhere in the $200s. The 2.7 GHz 3820QM in my mid-2012 MBP was $568 new, and that was top of the line; the 2.6 GHz model I believe cost $200 less than that (and wasn't noticeably slower).
This is indeed true, however I doubt that Apple gets all that much of a discount on that price. Whereas I'm sure there is a very large discrepancy in the iPhone/iPad cost for Apple and us.
And remember, iPhones are a LOT of money off-contract ($800+). I'm not saying it costs Apple that much to make them, of course it doesn't.. but it's not the $200-400 sticker price you see in stores
iPhones are a lot of money off-contract because that is what people are willing to pay for an off-contract phone. Every now and then someone tears apart a new iPhone and evaluates the cost of all the bits, it comes to somewhat less than $200. e.g. googling "iPhone parts cost breakdown".
The point I am making is that although the iPhone uses high quality, high cost mobile phone parts, they aren't really in the same league cost-wise as the high-quality, high cost notebook computer parts Apple uses in its MBP line. Therefore it should not be a surprise if the technology processes used in the manufacture of the iPhone is not as advanced as in the manufacture of an MBP.
Then, of course, there's the fact that Intel invests huge amounts of money making sure that their chip foundries are the best. So again, it's not surprising that a non-Intel chip would use a larger lithography process than Intel chips.
