News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Motorola Xoom up for pre-order at Best Buy this Thursday... for $1,199. Parent comment

Re:Motorola Xoom up for pre-order at Best Buy this Thursday.... by joezydeco on Sunday February 13, 2011 @10:28AM (#2212931)
But what does this really tell us about the price of iPads? Is Apple selling iPads at prices under the bill of materials, or do they have such a lock on things like NAND flash that nobody else can build a similar product for the same price?

All the talk about screen size and HDMI and ports is noise in the final price. You need to look at what Motorola is paying for things like flash, processor fab, and Gorilla Glass to understand why the price is so high.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Motorola Xoom up for pre-order at Best Buy this Thursday.... by danudey on Sunday February 13, 2011 @11:06AM (#2213024)
Apple saves a lot of money by pre-buying things like flash in massive quantity. It will drop millions all at once to ensure that it gets better prices than anyone else can get from it's suppliers, which helps keep costs low.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Motorola Xoom up for pre-order at Best Buy this Thursday.... by joezydeco on Sunday February 13, 2011 @12:21PM (#2213206)
It's not just contracts on pricing that Apple is dominating, it's the actual production capacity of the chip makers.

"Digitimes reported Wednesday that Apple recently placed an order of 50 million 8Gb flash chips that it plans to use for that iPhone thing you might have heard about, and therefore the rest of Samsung's customers will have to wait for their chips."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9983117-37.html

So if you're scrounging for NAND on the open market, you're gonna get screwed on price. It's not just Moto that's feeling the pressure.

[ Parent | on HN ]