How are the prices estimated? If the A-4 "costs" $17, are the analysts sure that Apple has to pay that much for it? Wouldn't a contract of such volume be likely to mean a lower price than is typical for these parts?
Actually, iSuppli assigns a separate assembly/manufacturing cost.
Besides being an estimate that could be woefully off base, it’s still not close to all the costs areas associated with a physical product.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iedsri
How are the prices estimated? If the A-4 "costs" $17, are the analysts sure that Apple has to pay that much for it? Wouldn't a contract of such volume be likely to mean a lower price than is typical for these parts?
As a general rule the increased usage of this PoP/SoC will help lower the overall costs in al areas of this chip, from engineering, testing, purchase orders, etc., but remember,that the A4 is Apple’s own ‘tweaked’ version of the Samsung’s “Hummingbird” S5PC110A01 SoC so it’s hard to say how much Apple has invested into eking out slightly better performance and power efficiency from this chip for their package and OS over the standard build cost.
PS: Also note that not all chips are the same — even if they have the exact same design and model numbers — and it’s been rumoured before that Apple buys chips, that have slightly better performance to power rating within the designed variance. If true, this would mean that Apple would pay more for these chips than if they went with the less optimal one.
It may have been said previously..but I think Apple is positioning the ATV for some major software enhancements. Apps/SDK, games, etc.
The fact that the new ATV is solely reliant on streaming makes me think Apple has major expansion plans!
ATV's photo slideshow with background music when viewed on a large Flat Screen TV is worth the price of admission.
Coupled now with NetFlix...instant viewing, it is a definite winner. Does it replace your cable box?
No, mainly because of the absence of sports.
Does it replace BlockBuster? Yep!
Does it replace RedBox? Renting from Apple at $5.00 a pop is convenient, but too expensive. I have had a lot of DVD's from RedBox skip b/c of scratches. Really annoying.
Besides being an estimate that could be woefully off base, it’s still not close to all the costs areas associated with a physical product.
Of course not. No one but Apple will know the exact costs for their devices. That said, assuming iSuppli consistently uses the same "flawed" methodology, the numbers should be pertinent relative to other iSuppli BOM estimates. iSuppli has never claimed that they were predicting COGS. They only say that it's an estimated parts cost + manufacturing.
iSuppli usually states that their estimates do not cover a number of costs (licensing, packaging, distribution, etc.).
Regarding assembly costs, they do a full teardown of these devices. If they are credible supply analysts, they should be able to extrapolate the estimated manufacturing cost, maybe not to the penny, but certainly within a reasonable figure.
If you want to refute the credibility of their entire organization and every BOM analysis they've ever done, well, that's a separate topic beyond the scope of this discussion.
Personally, I'm fine looking at their numbers and taking them with a large grain of salt (whose size is proportional to the BOM figure).
A 1/3 markup is unusually low, especially factoring it doesn't account for R&D. AAPL clearly intends sell it to the masses. I bought ATV 2 and love it! Already cut $18 mo from my TW cable bill including my new $9 Netflix account.
Jobs got this right and Google got it ass backwards! I don't wan't to turn my 46" Samsung into yet another ubiquitous computer device. I saw the Google TV promo and laughed my ass off! Very Ballmer-esque!
For two years on this site I’ve been told I was crazy to think the next AppleTV hardware would be ARM-based and run iOS, then iPhone OS and before that OS X iPhone. Not by everyone but enough people that I had to rethink my position on it more than once because so many disagreed with what I thought was mostly likely.
Now, I didn’t expect it to be $99. I figured $150, but I was also thinking of a more Apple-like profit margin and the Imagination 1080p HiP H.264 decoder chip.
I said this exact thing on Gizmodo about 18 months ago, and on Arstechnica even longer ago - in fact I think the reason Apple are insisting on CUDA capable GPUs in every portable Mac is because they will start to move consumer Macs towards iOS.
Comments
Actually, iSuppli assigns a separate assembly/manufacturing cost.
Besides being an estimate that could be woefully off base, it’s still not close to all the costs areas associated with a physical product.
How are the prices estimated? If the A-4 "costs" $17, are the analysts sure that Apple has to pay that much for it? Wouldn't a contract of such volume be likely to mean a lower price than is typical for these parts?
As a general rule the increased usage of this PoP/SoC will help lower the overall costs in al areas of this chip, from engineering, testing, purchase orders, etc., but remember,that the A4 is Apple’s own ‘tweaked’ version of the Samsung’s “Hummingbird” S5PC110A01 SoC so it’s hard to say how much Apple has invested into eking out slightly better performance and power efficiency from this chip for their package and OS over the standard build cost.
PS: Also note that not all chips are the same — even if they have the exact same design and model numbers — and it’s been rumoured before that Apple buys chips, that have slightly better performance to power rating within the designed variance. If true, this would mean that Apple would pay more for these chips than if they went with the less optimal one.
The fact that the new ATV is solely reliant on streaming makes me think Apple has major expansion plans!
ATV's photo slideshow with background music when viewed on a large Flat Screen TV is worth the price of admission.
Coupled now with NetFlix...instant viewing, it is a definite winner. Does it replace your cable box?
No, mainly because of the absence of sports.
Does it replace BlockBuster? Yep!
Does it replace RedBox? Renting from Apple at $5.00 a pop is convenient, but too expensive. I have had a lot of DVD's from RedBox skip b/c of scratches. Really annoying.
But, again, NetFlix is a winner for $10/mo.
Best!
Besides being an estimate that could be woefully off base, it’s still not close to all the costs areas associated with a physical product.
Of course not. No one but Apple will know the exact costs for their devices. That said, assuming iSuppli consistently uses the same "flawed" methodology, the numbers should be pertinent relative to other iSuppli BOM estimates. iSuppli has never claimed that they were predicting COGS. They only say that it's an estimated parts cost + manufacturing.
iSuppli usually states that their estimates do not cover a number of costs (licensing, packaging, distribution, etc.).
Regarding assembly costs, they do a full teardown of these devices. If they are credible supply analysts, they should be able to extrapolate the estimated manufacturing cost, maybe not to the penny, but certainly within a reasonable figure.
If you want to refute the credibility of their entire organization and every BOM analysis they've ever done, well, that's a separate topic beyond the scope of this discussion.
Personally, I'm fine looking at their numbers and taking them with a large grain of salt (whose size is proportional to the BOM figure).
Jobs got this right and Google got it ass backwards!
For two years on this site I’ve been told I was crazy to think the next AppleTV hardware would be ARM-based and run iOS, then iPhone OS and before that OS X iPhone. Not by everyone but enough people that I had to rethink my position on it more than once because so many disagreed with what I thought was mostly likely.
Now, I didn’t expect it to be $99. I figured $150, but I was also thinking of a more Apple-like profit margin and the Imagination 1080p HiP H.264 decoder chip.
I said this exact thing on Gizmodo about 18 months ago, and on Arstechnica even longer ago - in fact I think the reason Apple are insisting on CUDA capable GPUs in every portable Mac is because they will start to move consumer Macs towards iOS.