How Apple is reinventing the iPhone with new materials and record R&D spending

Apple's engineering of this year’s iPhone 17 in many way goes back to the basics in a way that founder Steve Jobs used to — a culture that continues to work for the company even now.

Specifically, engineering proprietary materials to build iPhones took precedence at Apple over reducing supply chain costs, Dinh, , vice-president and head of iPhone design, told Mint. At the same time, the company also ramped up its goal of increasing sustainability of energy and raw material sourcing across its global supply chain, of which India makes for a key part.

“With material selection, more than the supply chain, it always starts with what the right material is to enable a specific iPhone design and the customer experience we’re looking to deliver. We develop the product around the idea that we have, the best material library that we have, and the best materials that we can custom-design," Dinh said.

“The aluminium on this year’s iPhone, for instance, comes from the library of materials that we’ve been using. We combined this with specific manufacturing styles, such as forging a unibody design for performance."

R&D growth faster

iPhone sales generated about half, or $209.6 billion, of Apple’s $416 billion annual revenue, and 68% of its products revenue. Apple’s R&D spending grew at over 10% year-on-year to $34.6 billion – over 8% of the company’s top line outpacing revenue expansion of 6.4%.

Dinh emphasized how his employer prioritizes customer experience in the design of future makes of iPhones with an intent of protecting its global market leader status.

“The amount of time we at Apple spend on the R&D for a particular product isn’t bound by a set period and varies across products. It comes down to what we’re trying to enable as feature goals and the most important part of it is that the process always starts with what we’re pursuing as customer experience goals — and we take it from there with R&D into technology, materials and manufacturing," he said.

Such emphasis on material sourcing “is typical of the kind of focus that Apple has always had on product engineering," said Tarun Pathak, partner and research director at Counterpoint Research. “If you go all the way back to the Steve Jobs era, Apple has always been known for precision engineering and the perceived halo that has helped Apple find India as a major market is also driven by the reputation that it can create products that are far above the level of engineering that other companies do," he said.

Materials first

Speaking about the company’s 2025 series of iPhones, Dinh said that Apple invested in “creating single-degree control of manufacturing conditions such as temperature to get a desired micro-structure" to integrate a new heat control technology. Dinh said that this is key to its latest iPhone being capable of carrying out artificial intelligence applications and on-device large language models processing.

“We made a custom-designed vapour chamber out of 100% recycled components. We also engineered a new Apple-designed silicon oxynitrite ceramic coating on top of our improved ceramic shield glass, which bonds down into the material at an atomic level. This coating added hardness to make our proprietary glass three times more scratch resistant than before," Dinh said.

Heavy R&D spending is crucial for Apple, given its heavy reliance on the iPhone. In India, Apple is eyeing a seventh consecutive year of double-digit growth in sales, with 15 million iPhones estimated to be sold in India by Apple this year. Globally, Apple accounted for 18% of all smartphones sold in the September quarter. Francisco Jeromino, vice-president at IDC, attributed Apple’s growth to its “best results ever in a June quarter", as well as iPhone 17 preorders surpassing previous generations.

To sustain this growth, Dinh said that the company is doubling down on repairability as well. “We’ve used R&D to really improve ease of repair, with innovations such as the ability to remove the iPhone battery simply by static-charged adhesive (which reduces chances of damage). Our thermal architecture inside is removable just with screws. This improves repairability further without going through a complicated procedure."

Back to repair

Apple now designs products to be repairable, think about aspects of repair to be serviced, and have a long life cycle, Dinh said. "…we also make material choices to ensure that an iPhone’s life cycle is durable and can be passed down in the family to make the most of it and avoid repairs altogether. Material choices such as proprietary titanium 3D printing are done for improvement and optimization of manufacturing as well," he added.

India, meanwhile, continues to become more important for Apple’s global operations. On 31 October, Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, called out a 14th straight quarter of record revenue from India. The company is also increasing both retail and manufacturing presence in India. Apple now has four owned physical retail outlets and is expected to open two more in the coming months.

Its manufacturing operations are also on the rise. Earlier this year, Apple asked its assembly partners in India to ramp up capacities as it chose to supply the US market from non-China markets. While US president Donald Trump has since increased the pressure on Apple to manufacture in the US and not India, companies such as Tata Electronics are expected to see a strong fillip driven by rising iPhone exports from India.

Still, market tracker Omdia’s data said iPhone exports neared 24 million units in the first six months of this fiscal, crossing $10 billion in export value.

Green focus

While Apple did not comment specifically on its India operations for design and material sourcing, Will True, iPhone product manager at Apple, added that the company has set sustainability goals for all of its global manufacturing and supply chain vendors.

“We’re trying to increase the amount of recycled materials in our products… looking for sources of materials and working with manufacturing partners worldwide and having the entire supply chain worldwide working on renewable energy in factories globally. The sustainability percentage varies product by product and is based on material choices, scale of operations, and even perceiving the volumes that we’re working at," he added.