having opened up my old remote to repair it in various ways, there are shockingly few components:
- front plastic shell with holes for the buttons
- back plastic shell with half the battery contacts
- a single pcb with the other half of the battery contacts on the back
- an ir bulb soldered to the pcb
- a single floppy silicone membrane that's thicker where there are buttons and thin elsewhere. each "button" has a small metal dot centered on the back of it.
that's it. that's everything. it's 5 components total and they all must be incredibly cheap to product. the pcb more or less does everything. maybe that's modern electronics for ya