What Comes After the Roomba?

Re:What Comes After the Roomba? by rasz on Thursday October 25, 2018 @12:16AM (#18298518)

its 100% in R&D. Real commodity hardware is sold at ~3x raw material cost, with R&D amortized over millions of units and very long period. Every time you see something made in china and go "how the hell can this be so cheap" is seeing real commodity price, with no R&D and middleman margins. People will argue about quality, by writing replies on keyboards that cost $5 to make in China, and clicking send with $0.2 BoYue microswitch in their $70(retail) mouse.

You could in theory make 500K robots at 5K if you give up any notion of recouping development cost by tackling ridiculous margins, and instead concentrate on moving millions of units.

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Re:What Comes After the Roomba? by grogenaut on Thursday October 25, 2018 @03:10AM (#18299059)

Why aren't cars $5k then? Heck most basic motorcycles are $7k plus and they're well understood and very simple.

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Re:What Comes After the Roomba? by rasz on Thursday October 25, 2018 @04:58AM (#18299485)

Cherry QQ (chevy spark copy) is ~$5K in china, being a ripoff removed R&D cost.

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Re:What Comes After the Roomba? by grogenaut on Thursday October 25, 2018 @11:44AM (#18301772)

Great you literally cherry picked the lowest possible example for your argument. So after 100 years of development and ip theft yes the least featured model might be at that price level. I concede the argument. I look forward to getting my cheap robot in 100 years on the libertarian colony of vega

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Re:What Comes After the Roomba? by rasz on Friday October 26, 2018 @04:48AM (#18307682)

Cheapest "cars" in China start under $1K, Cherry QQ is actually decent in comparison. Want different example? How about micro controllers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rixo78hv_lw 3 cent in Asia, cheapest US based manufacturer offerings start at 30 cent.

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