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Yep, not even close.
At the same time, there's a reason why Apple has a quarter trillion dollars in pure profit sitting in offshore owned accounts. It's from their high profit margin, which is much higher for iPhones than other products such as iPads (which make about 30% gross):
Apple is generally assumed to make over 50% gross profit on iPhones. I've written up an analysis several times before, so I'll just summarize:
E.g. an iPhone sold for $640 wholesale yields about $340 gross profit after manufacturing, royalty and shipping costs. Of that, about $20 goes to R&D, $50 to support Apple employees and buildings and sales and ads, and $70 is put aside for future taxes in case the money is ever brought into the US... leaving a net profit of ~$200 per phone (about 30%). This is in line with what Blackberry used to make in their hey day.
You're totally free to come up with your own analysis, of course.
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I don't know whom it is that assumes Apple's gross profit on iPhones is over 50%, but they likely aren't correct. The math doesn't work.
If the aggregate gross margin on Apple's other product categories (i.e. iPad, Mac, and Other Products) is 30% as you suggest, then its gross margin on iPhones is around 42%. That's using numbers for FY 2016. For the first 9 months of FY 2017, it would be even lower. The actual gross margin for iPhones was likely a little higher than 42% in FY 2016, perhaps around 45%. But that's about as high as it could have been. If it was 45%, then the aggregate gross margin for those other product categories would have to have been around 20%. At 50% gross margin for iPhones, the gross margin for those other categories would have been in the single digits. And to be clear, that's not taking into account operating expenses (R&D and SG&A) or taxes. Also, we're talking about the aggregate gross margin for iPhones which includes the effects of higher margin models (e.g. Plus and high storage models) pulling the average up.
If we attribute all of Apple's post-tax profit for FY 2016 to iPhones - if we assume that, in effect, Apple didn't make money on anything else - then that works out to about $216 per iPhone sold.
The $70 estimate is also too high. Apple, of course, effectively pays taxes in the United States on the profits from iPhones sold in the Americas. But even looking only at iPhones sold outside of the Americas, the deferred taxes it accounted for in FY 2016 would amount to around $40 per iPhone. And that doesn't allocate any of those deferred taxes to the profits which effectively come from other products and services. If we look at the situation in prior years, Apple's deferred taxes were considerably less.
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actual physical manufacturing costs are mostly irrelevant for overall costs of a device to make.
The question becomes more, how much % of profit are they actually making on each device one all costs are factored (Cost of business, not just manufacturing).
Apple historically makes about 35% profit on their devices (unless it's changed), so Apple's profits per device are probably close to $450 making $200-300 profit on each device.
they COULD have kept the price the same, heck they could still have lowered it to 599 and still been an insanely profitable device. but no, Apple raised prices. Got to appease wallstreet and those epic margin numbers.
Before or after taxes? After taxes Apple probably makes, in effect, around $150 on average per iPhone. Obviously on some models it would make more than that and on some it would make less. There would also be variation based on, e.g., where they were sold and whether they were sold through direct channels or through third parties.
