As with every gadget that comes out, someone had to go and disassemble the darn thing. And even though the Palm Pre only come out today, Rapid Repair has already torn it apart, rapidly. A rough “guesstimate” of the cost for Palm to put the Pre together? Around $170; the device retails, sorta, for $199.
Would I recommend you try to disassemble a Pre of your own? No, that would be silly. Granted, I’m not the handiest person in the world—I fried an Xbox1 motherboard trying to install a modchip some years ago; plug-in mod to the rescue!—but, really, there’s not point anymore.
And a brief note to all y’all Palm Pre fans: as you’re standing on line, waiting for the kid behind the counter to hand you your phone, please don’t forget that today is June 6: 65 years ago to the day of the D-Day invasion. Many young men died so that you could have the freedom to wait in line at Best Buy or Radioshack all day and pick up your new plastic god.
Just keep ‘em in mind, ok?
That is all.
via GIZMODO
Thanks for the insightful last paragraph.
It is my feeling that using D-day in as a byline in an article about the Palm Pre is grossly inappropriate.
“Here’s some consumer glut, oh and btw D-day lulz.”
Nicholas, your love for Apple should not translate to hate for the Palm PRE.
Why do you hate the PRE?
That would be the cost for 1, when you are mass producing these with parts at cost price it would be more like $60/phone, maybe less
Why didn’t you also tell us a bit about Ghettos, Nazis, Gas Chambers as well, now that since this article is on Pre.
“Kid” behind the counter ? Yep, Palm hired my 7 year kid newphew to help them in their operations.
Love ya.
OK, go threadjacking.
ANYWAY, just a reminder that $170 is what it costs to buy all the parts, not to actually assemble the device. Not the same thing. $170 would just get you a bag of parts. Not a Pre, and no WebOS.
Exactly right. In addition to labor, one needs to add on the amoritization for equipment and tooling, plus allocations for things such as engineering and general administration. Don’t forget about packaging, marketing and transportation. Plus there’s a profit margin on top of all of this. Suddenly that $800 no-contract price starts to make sense.
“In addition to labor, one needs to add on the amoritization for equipment and tooling, plus allocations for things such as engineering and general administration. Don’t forget about packaging, marketing and transportation.”
Nonsense, the thing is contract manufactured. The likes of Crunchgear marketed the thing for them, all they had to do was withhold information and selectively leak it. The rest of the costs are down in the noise compared to the margin. Remember the thing sells for something like $800 true price. Greed…
Go get some manufacuturing experience and than come back and comment.
800 is not the no contract price $550 is. That is probably double the Palm cost including R&D on the hardware, OS development, licensing (palm is actually licensing from Microsoft and qualcomm, and others) .
The estimate on the parts is probably high as prices keep dropping
Here is a guesstamate:
-parts $170
-assembly/testing $10
-HW R&D (depends on how they account): ~15
-OS (also depends on how accounted and whether they recapture at 500k or 3million ~20
- Marketing $5
- support Tech and Warrant $15
-Palm costs Licensing of 3rd party IP : $20.
There are a lot of variables but the likely rough numbers given the hardware, the no contract list of $550 and the Sprint in contract of $200 mean the following
Hardware assembled costs TO Palm: $180
Rough net cost to Palm: $240
Probable cost to Sprint from Palm: $300
That falls win with industry numbers of approximately $100 subsidy cost born by Sprint (buying at $300 selling to customers at $200) on subsidy retail sells and 75% to 80% markup on non subsidy sales.
I own a Sprint dealership and am terminating it in favor of AT&T later this month.
I am a 20 year veteran of the cellular industry representing almost every carrier at one time or another. We were originally a Preferred Partner for Nextel prior to the merger. In my time, I have never been associated with a carrier that operates the way Sprint does. They are a dirty operation, deceptive and most significantly … they couldn’t care less about their customers. Don’t believe me? When was the last time you had a productive conversation with their customer care reps?
Exclusive dealers are designed to be a reflection of the carrier. We are to operate and act as parallel to them in every way. I refuse to run my company in such a way to mirror an operation like Sprint.
Do yourself a favor. Skip Sprint. Go with a winner like AT&T or Verizon. Sprint is a sinking ship.
Last productive conversation with Sprint? Yesterday. I got a used phone on Friday, from craigslist. It was a brick, locking up all the time. I took it to the sprint store. They couldn’t repair it, so they are going to issue me a new one, since I have insurance. Just a few months ago, my sister in law racked up ~$2k in international roaming charges while in Mexico. They waived the charges with one call. The charges were valid, and I was only looking for a reduced amount. You deal with Sprint on a more regular basis than I do, but I don’t really know anyone recently who has had horror stories with Sprint.
Uhm… as far as I know my history, the USA’s consumers weren’t under any real threat from the axis team. Yes the Japanese attacked you preemptively, but they werent a threat except for some camper out in the woods who picked up a downed explosive balloon from them and a failed forrest fire attempt. Your industry had a great time selling to the europeans though whilst they were fighting eachother.