"Margin expansion while sales quadruple is a good indicator that a company is producing real value not just trading sales volume for profit," Dediu writes. As of January 2010, Apple's overall gross margins reached more than $10.3 billion for the quarter, an astounding jump of 543% from five years ago. Dediu calculates that iOS-based products, which didn't exist five years ago, power about 70% of Apple's current gross profits.

So the importance of the "Bloomberg teardown" has nothing to do with the amount of RAM. It was to do with Apple's capacity to maintain very high margins on the next iPhone, without increasing its price and possibly offering it at a slightly lower price.

Just how hard it is to do that, and how successful Apple is at it, can be seen in that compares smartphone selling prices and profitability for the leading vendors. 

John Cox covers wireless networking and mobile computing for Network World.

: http://twitter.com/johnwcoxnww