“The group conducted what it called a ‘virtual teardown’ of the iPad, since the device is not yet available and component suppliers have not been announced,” Madway reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, so it’s a guess, albeit right down to the penny.
Madway continues, “For the $499 iPad — the lowest-cost model, which features 16 gigabytes of flash memory — iSuppli estimated the total materials cost at $219.35, with a $10 manufacturing cost. The priciest iPad will cost around $335 to produce, while the mid-range model will cost roughly $287, the group said.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: iSuppli estimated only the total cost of components and does not factor in the significant R&D, assembly, packaging, marketing, and other costs associated with Apple’s iPad.
Gruber had a great headline for this story: Remember the Old Days, When iSuppli Would Actually Wait Until They Could Take a New Apple Device Apart Before Making Up a Ridiculously Lowball Estimate for How Much It Costs to Make?
Hey iSuppli!
Remember when you used to matter to anyone?
Not to mention the cost of OSX…
Anybody see the destruction of an iPad on Tosh.0 last night? He got one from apple, and didn’t even boot it up, just hit it with a 9 iron in a comedy sketch.
Wow, I can do a virtual teardown of Pamela Anderson.
I bet she doesn’t wear a bra or panties.
iSuppli….. What a joke.
All the V heads (as in virtual) should forever be condemned to virtual sex exclusively, so they can realize the real difference…
What is the problem here? ISuppli has over the years established itself as a fairly reliable estimator of net manufacturing costs of hardware. They were consistently correct or very close with their numbers. Such information (manufacturing cost) is always desperately needed by various analysts and investment firms, in order to estimate profits on these devices.
Obviously, there is tons of noise about the iPad and many of these investment firms don’t want to wait until end of March (or April) for iSuppli to provide more accurate numbers, so they asked for preliminary ones, based on prior experience and estimate of cost of components expected to be in there.
Unlike many “analysts” out there who tend to pull all kinds of numbers out of thin air (or a bodily orifice), iSupply has plenty of prior experience in determining exact cost of components and labour that goes into building, packaging and shipping a device.
I am much more ready to trust any number that iSuppli provides, even if it is based on just a guess, then any experienced ‘financial analyst’.
The number seems just about in line with all other Apple mobile hardware (especially iPhone/iPod touch). I wouldn’t be surprised if two months from now, when the accurate number comes out, it doesn’t vary from this by more than $10.
How much does it cost for the R&D;, advertising, wages, bonuses etc.?
wasn’t this reported on last week? oh yeah, it was.
…”How much does it cost for the R&D;, advertising, wages, bonuses etc.?”
That is impossible to guess. Some of R&D;is device-specific, but a lot of it is not. When iPhone was being readied for the market, Apple pulled a bunch of developers from the Leopard project and over to the iPhone. Core iPhone OS is OS X, which is common across all Apple hardware products (Macs, AppleTV, iPod touch, iPhone, iPad..), but GUI part is only (mostly) common with the iPod touch.
Some of the advertising is also device-specific (or product-line specific, such as iPod ads), but a lot of it is for brand awareness that benefits all Apple products (product placement, Apple logos, etc).
Nobody ever includes any of these costs in any estimates, and nobody expect these costs to ever be included for any specific product, because they simply cannot possibly be determined. They are included in “Operating Expenses” line on the financial report, and these tend to be fairly consistent (and therefore predictable) from quarter to quarter.
Jim – TIV writes, “Anybody see the destruction of an iPad on Tosh.0 last night? He got one from apple, and didn’t even boot it up, just hit it with a 9 iron in a comedy sketch.”
I’m thinking that was just a prop. One would have to be sick to do that to a real iPad. Not to mention he’d never get another such gift from Apple in the future.
Raymond: I agree with you. Clearly a prop. Nicely done though. Better than PeeWee’s!
We all know about CRAPPLE tax
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http://www.bing.com When it comes to decisions that matter, Bing & Decide
An analyst determined that Microsoft makes 99% profit on windows.
Unit cost of MS Windows is $0.27:
http://tinyurl.com/windows-component-costs