hist78: Both ecosystems have their assemblers who exist on thin margins and deep labor cost advantages.
astilo: Two chips: One costs $20 to manufacture (in a 14nm IDM), the other cost $25 (in 16nm foundry) with $250 of fully-loaded costs per unit. Which one is cheaper?
First, I didn't include Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd) in my table. Foxconn anlog with several other companies (such as Quanta Computer, Winstron, Compal, Pegatron, and many other) assemble desktops and laptops on behalf of Apple, HP, Lenovo, Asus, and Acer. Foxconn, Quanta, Winstron, Cpmpal, and Pegatron are the "assembler" you're talking about and they do have thing profit margin.
Those assemblers don't make meaningful profit while HP, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, and very possible DELL don't make meaningful profit either. So who are making big money in this Wintel ecosystem?
Here is one of the biggest problem in the Wintel ecosystem: only Intel and Microsoft are enjoying the wonderful profit and they don't want to give up an inch to other players in the Wintel ecosystem. In some cases Intel and Microsoft even compete directly against HP, Lenove, Asus, Acer, and Dell who are using Intel and Microsoft's solutions. Intel's server products and Microsoft's Surface Pro are the bloody evidences.
This Wintel ecosystem is more and more like a "peasant" system.
Then we can look into the fabless ecosystem. Between the TSMC who makes the processors/SoC and the Foxconn who assemble iPhones, there are many other companies making decent profit. This is a much healthy ecosystem and it will develop many more profitable and sizable markets.
The $20 Intel CPU cost you mentioned is great, but only good for Intel. For Acer, Asus, Lenove, HP, and DELL, they won't see that $20 unit price when they receive invoices from Intel. The real price they got from Intel is probably five to ten time of that $20.
It makes me wonder who doesn't want to do away from Intel's products if building your own processors can differentiate youself from your peer? Especially if you have more money in the bank than Intel or you are much bigger than Intel!
Apple can pay less than $40 to get the A9X instead of paying $100 ~ $200 for a Intel Core m3-6y30. Apple is again and again telling the world the huge benefit of design your own processors/SoC.
Market capitalization:
Apple $528.19B
Google $483.5B
Microsoft $393.26B
Facebook $331.71B
Amazon $328.75B
Intel $142.75B
TSMC $125.8B
AMD $3.21B
Source: Yahoo Finance. Data collected on May 25, 2016.