HP's TouchPad tablet may sport a very similar spec to the Apple iPad 2 - parimarily the 9.7in, 768 x 1024 IPS LCD panel they both share - but Apple got the best deal on parts.

Market watcher iHS iSuppli took the tablets apart and found that the bits inside the HP offering totalled $296 (£185). That's for the 16GB model - the cost of the extra 16GB of Flash storage in the 32GB TouchPad takes its Bill of Materials (BoM) to $318 (£199).

You can add $10 to those totals to cover manufacturing, iSuppli says. Distribution, marketing and the cost of buying Palm for WebOS will only narrow the gap with the $499/£399 and $599/£499 retail prices further.

Apple's 32GB iPad 2 with 3G - absent from the HP - costs $327, according to a BoM analysis iSuppli conducted in March. Knock off $19 for the 3G radio and you have $308 - $10 less than the equivalent TouchPad.

A small amount, to be sure, but it's in the accumulation of such small change that fortunes are made in the consumer hardware biz. ®